


Latte's Collection

by notegbert (daedalusdavinci)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreambubbles, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Paranoia, Tumblr Prompt, but only a little and its forewarned in applicable chapters, dreambubble ghosts, i dont know if thats a trigger tag or not but, like a lot of that idk how i forgot abt it until now, suicide ideation, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2020-12-31 05:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 35,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21085979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daedalusdavinci/pseuds/notegbert
Summary: Your name is Dave Strider, and your life ended when you were impaled on the swords of two dogs, black and white. But, the afterlife isn't so bad, really. You live with your best bro, Karkat, and Jade's just next door, and you have two cats, so you're chilling. Plus, you kind have access to the whole ass multiverse now.--Or, a collection of drabbles written for a doomed Dave (nicknamed Latte by friends) RP blog on tumblr. Some of these are drabbles for prompts, and some of them are fics I actually put a lot of effort in. You'll know by the titles. I wanted to put everything in this little sort of canon-divergent AU in one place.





	1. for your muse falling asleep on mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin. khar is a human/kidstuck karkat harley thing, and my friends brainchild. written for an ask meme

Movie nights with Khar were… It was weird, kind of. But weird in the sense of how stupid easy it was to settle into a comfortable vibe. Khar was the best mix of two of his absolute favorite people in the world, and hanging out with him just kind of came naturally. It was kind of dumb, how comfortable Dave felt around him already.

He was so much fun to spend time with, too. It was easy to just talk about dumb, useless bullshit with him, and sometimes, that was exactly what he needed. Both of them kind of needed that- a little break from the stresses and drama of their individual lives, where they could just shoot the shit about how fucking stupid Alternian romance movies were. It wasn’t productive. It wasn’t helping them learn more about each other on a deeper level, or helping them work through their own private issues, or anything like that. It was just. Fun.

They got absurdly into it, too. Hours snapped by in the blink of an eye as they marathoned movie after movie from Karkat’s collection, stretched out in a shitty makeshift fort Dave had insisted was essential to the movie experience. Sometimes, they had to stop the movie so they could really give a proper analysis of how fucking bad it was, whipping out the paper and crayons for a proper illustration of the flaws. It was a serious fucking event, in the way that some sort of off the wall Disney conspiracy theory is serious at four am. It was so serious, that even with Dave’s perfect sense of time, he lost track of it.

They got slower. They got quieter. They got a little bit more hysterical. One particularly dumb comment about a subpar sex scene from Khar had Dave laughing until he started tearing up, nearly suffocating himself in a pillow to hide it. Khar’s metaphors got more creative and less coherent, and Dave nodded along like it made perfect sense, even when the words started to slur and lose coherency entirely. Eventually, it got to the point where Dave was just facedown in a pillow, rambling muffled bullshit, and Khar was just staring at the movie screen with the world’s most exhausted and disbelieving expression.

And, finally, the sleep deprivation claimed its first victim. The next time Dave looked up, Khar was out fucking cold, drooling on the pillow while the movie droned on.

Only the exhaustion kept him from laughing.

After drawing a nice red dick on Khar’s cheek, as was a necessary tradition at sleepovers (probably), Dave finally shut up, shut his eyes, and gave up on trying to stay awake.


	2. Google: How Do Insomniacs Cuddle at Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little on the roommate dynamics. sleepy fluff stuff

For you and Karkat, this is old hand; something you used to do back on the meteor when shadows seemed to stand up and move. For Jade, it was apparently a regular thing on the ship, before she lost everyone. It's only all the more comforting to her now, so the nights when she's here, this is just even more commonplace. More nights than not, the three of you could be found sprawled out on the floor, mattresses and pillows and blankets laid out in heaps and limbs tangled in one huge mess.  
  
Jade's hair is everywhere, in your face and in your fingers, with her ears twitching and flicking against your chin every now and again. With the way she's got her head jammed into your chest, it's unavoidable. Your fingers gently comb through her hair and twist her curls around your knuckles to the ticking of the clock in your heart. The idle rhythm soothes you, and so does the sound of her offbeat snoring breaking it up when you need something else to focus on. Her knees bump against yours when she shifts. Her hand bunches up more of your shirt in her fist. You worry she might suffocate in so many blankets, but she always seems comfortable and fine. If she's not, she pushes them off onto you, and you've never had a problem with too many blankets.  
  
You can't see much of anything through her hair, but even if you could, you wouldn't be able to see Karkat against your back. You can feel him, though, with his body pressed so close and his warmth creeping into your skin. He's got a heavy arm locked over you and Jade and an ankle through your legs, toes brushing against Jade, no doubt. His forehead is against the back of your skull, lips pressed to the knot at the base of your neck. His chest moves against your back when he breathes, stuck in the habit despite not needing to, and it's soothing too.  
  
You always sleep best trapped between the two of them, surrounded by the reassuring presence of people you trust and care about. Jade was your first friend. Karkat is the one who knows you best. You'd give your life for either.  
  
But being this tangled up, you feel every stirring. Karkat moves like he's made of drying cement, heavy and slow. Fingers slide against your arm and trace their way up to your own hand, where his pinky hooks around your thumb. His forefinger twirls one of Jade's curls around itself, and he's locked in.  
  
You rub his pinky with your own index finger in a gesture that's supposed to be affectionate or soothing or something. He snorts against your skin and you think that's probably fair. But, he kisses where your neck joins your shoulder, so you probably got the idea across anyway.  
  
For a moment, you think about speaking and breaking the silence. You could start a conversation. One that would probably go something like-  
  
_You're still awake._  
  
_So are you._  
  
_Can't sleep?_  
  
_Nah. You?_  
  
You can hear it in your mind. You've had it enough times before to have it memorized, echoing through your head at a moment's consideration. Neither of you are very good at sleeping and more often than not it shows. Jade, unfortunately, actually does sleep easy and a lot, so you frequently find yourselves stuck in bed and forced to sleep because of her (read: lay awake and bored for hours). This situation is no different than the countless others before it.  
  
You decide not to say anything. He knows you're awake. You know he can't sleep. There's no point in making small talk when it'll only wake Jade up.  
  
Speech forsaken, you lift your head a little to sort of gently nudge his affectionately. There's not much else you can do when you're pinned in place like this. Still, you want to show some kind of affection, and acknowledge his waking state. When you set your head against the pillow again, he follows you, and you bite back a smile as he nuzzles your hair.  
  
At least in times like these, when you can't fall asleep and your arm is all pins and needles under Jade, you have Karkat. You and your housemate don't always see entirely eye to eye, but you trust him more than anyone else at this point in your life. You know each other inside and out.  
  
Which means, he knows that you're ticklish, and trailing his fingers up your spine that lightly is bound to make your skin crawl. It takes so much effort not to squirm and upset Jade's position against you, but you finally manage to kick his leg. His only response is to snort, and stop, letting you drop your leg back over his.  
  
He's being a dick, and you know he knows he is. So, you tuck your foot behind Karkat's calf, pressing your ice cold toes into the ribbed carapace and taking satisfaction in the way he hisses against your shoulder. He pulls his foot away from yours, and instead nudges his knee between your legs. Like this, you sadly can't continue warning up your feet on him, and he can maintain close contact. It's terrible. You huff in quiet complaint, and he kisses your ear.  
  
Jade snorts abruptly into your chest, head jerking suddenly so your hands almost pull in her hair. The two of you freeze, holding your breath, but she just shifts and nuzzles back into you. Silently, you breathe a sigh of relief, and you can feel Karkat do the same.  
  
With the scare over, Karkat nuzzles back into your hair and you relax again. You know it's probably time to just go to sleep, before you really do accidentally wake up Jade. It feels like it should be easy, warm and comfortable between them, but...  
  
Nope. Still can't fall asleep. After a couple minutes of perfect silence and stillness, you sigh. Jade's ear hits you in the mouth, disturbed by your breath, and your nose scrunches up.  
  
Karkat echoes your sigh against the back of your neck. He's still awake too, then.  
  
Another two minutes tick by before you hear the very quiet clicking and chirping of Alternian; or, feel it, might be more accurate. The language is heavy in vibration, especially when Karkat speaks so quietly, so it's easier to get it past Jade when she's sleeping.  
  
This is, of course, incredibly unfair, because human vocal chords were never meant for Alternian vocabulary and you can't say anything back to him. When you do try to speak Alternian, it's horribly butchered, and sometimes Karkat still laughs at your attempts. You can understand it, though.  
  
A nod seems like the safest response. Risking whispering this close to Jade's ears is a dangerous game you don't feel like playing.  
  
With your confirmation, Karkat carefully and slowly starts to pull away from you. It's easy for him; he's barely touching Jade anyway. He's free in no time, but you're still trapped against her. The asshole just sits by and watches your sad attempts to free yourself rather than help, and you think you might've heard him snicker once or twice. Against all odds, though, you manage to detangle yourself from Jade and sit up. Karkat helps you to your feet and the two of you make a break for it.  
  
Which is to say, you head straight for the kitchen to make hot chocolate and bitch about your insomnia. You'd say that's a night pretty well spent.  
  
You sit on counters and kick each other's feet, and carefully turn off the kettle before it whistles and wakes Jade up in the other room. Between sips of cocoa, you whisper conversation, bouncing banter back and forth. You make it through three mugs, while he only drinks the one. But, it's the kind of activity where you might have lost track of time, were it not for the clocks always ticking in your heart.  
  
You know eventually you'll have to go back to sleep. It never feels right, just leaving Jade to sleep on her own and giving into the insomnia. Karkat's heart is too soft to ever let him do it. You will go back and try again.  
  
But, for now, you let the hours slip away. It's only once you catch yourself mid-yawn that Karkat seems to realize how late it is, but even then, he lets you distract him for another hour or two. Sleep is easy to put off, and Jade sleeps so long and so deeply it's easy to slide it past her.  
  
Eventually, though, you do go back. Like scorned dogs with hanging heads, you tuck yourselves back into the blanket pile and cuddle up to her, one on either side to make up for your abandonment.  
  
She moves to cuddle up so easily, you suspect she may be awake and onto you.  
  
She doesn't open her eyes or speak, but you meet Karkat's eyes in the darkness, and the two of you are sure. But you say nothing. You close your eyes first, and you're sure Karkat follows.  
  
This time, you do fall asleep.


	3. for my muse falling asleep on yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin. this john is my friends, and is the same john my ar is dating

Sleep was… Hm. Dave had a complicated relationship with sleep. For nights and nights at a time, he would go without it, kept up in restless fits of anxiety, or too busy hyperfocusing on something to bother sleeping. Or, he’d try to go to sleep, and every creak and whisper in the house would startle him awake, or nightmares would wake him up again in a matter of minutes to hours. Being dead only made it worse, because now there wasn’t really any consequence to staying up, so he could. And he did.

It wasn’t something he ever talked about, because it’d probably worry people and they’d insist he slept and this and that. The whole shebang. The only person who really had any idea of how bad it was was Karkat, who was the one who so often had Dave pushing his way into the coon with him, or Dave passing out on him during movies.

Dave had a really bad habit of passing out during movies after too long awake. And, with John, well… it was just too easy.

John was a solid, safe, and comforting presence. He was understanding, trustworthy, and sweet, and hardly the kind to make fun of Dave for letting his exhaustion get the better of him (though Dave might end up with a mustache for his trouble). During movie nights, he never protested against Dave’s clinginess, and downright indulged him, wrapping Dave up in his hold and letting him relax in the comfort of his arms. And, when Dave was exhausted and zoning out hard, it was almost easy to imagine it was Karkat. Their body size was similar enough that his sleep-deprived brain could draw the connection and cling to it. That familiarity, combined with the exhaustion, combined with the feeling of just being… safe, all got the better of him.

He caught himself drifting as Robin Williams told Ben Stiller about how he definitely didn’t think Sacagawea was hot as hell, and snapped back awake, shifting on the couch and readjusting his cheek on John’s shoulder. He watched through one of the blatantly gay cowboy and roman soldier’s fights, and that was the last thing he really remembered.

Dave was out fucking cold, leaned heavy into John, but otherwise entirely still and silent. With the shades covering his eyes, it took John until he went to crack a joke about Ben Stiller’s questionable relationship with the monkey and got no response from Dave to realize the dude was just out fucking cold on him.

…So, that left the inevitable question that anyone is faced with when someone falls asleep on them. What did he do? Wake him up? Bring him to bed? Let him sleep where he was?

It ended up being sort of a mix. John let him sleep through the rest of the movie, and as the credits rolled, tried to gently wake him up. Which. Didn’t really work so well. The most he got from Dave was a lot of incoherent grumbling and him pressing closer. He tried again, and Dave lifted his head just enough to give him the world’s sleepiest fucking look- not even on purpose! There was no way Dave would knowingly give him such a look, and willingly appear so tired and lost, trying to process what was going on and failing miserably. He just wanted to sleep, and absolutely could not understand why his wonderful, loving best friend would do such a horrible thing like wake him up.

…So John sighed, and scooped Dave straight on up, getting to his feet. “Okay. Bed time.”

Which, was enough to startle him a little, but not really enough at the same time. He gripped on tighter, shoved his face in John’s shoulder, and grumbled something else fully incoherent. He actually kept grumbling, babbling complete muffled fucking nonsense into John’s shoulder the whole way up to his room. Something, something, something, not that tired. Yeah fuckin right.

But, when John went to set Dave down in his actual bed, he… didn’t really let go. Didn’t want to let go. It was so painfully obvious in the way he hesitated and clung even tighter, like he’s terrified of the very thought of being left alone. But he let go, and flopped back, even as he scrubbed at his eyes and muttered something about just needing a second, and then he’ll get right up and be fine.

And John, with his heart of melted fucking butter, just nudged him aside and piled right the hell in with him, muttering something about sleep-deprived dumbasses and Strider apologists.


	4. On Ghostly Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you don't sleep, because you can't stop wondering if there's anyone who cares about you. But you've got Karkat.

**Dave's PoV**  
  
Even though he was so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open, when you climbed into the recooperacoon, he just closed you in his embrace and pressed his face into your hair like it was instinct, rubbing a hand slowly over your back. He clicked sleepily at you in Alternian, and you could hear that underlying affectionate chirp in there; the one that made Kanaya give him amused looks before he puffed up in embarrassment and stuck his middle finger under her nose. “_Are you okay?_”

You wanted to tell him no. You also wanted to tell him yes. Instead, you said nothing, and pressed your cheek to his chest the way you always liked to, listening to the raspy rumble-click of his voice.

Karkat yawned, and you felt his chest move with it, expanding and rising, and then sinking down again as his hand came to land in your hair, brushing gently through it. “_I can turn on something shitty and find the Governor, if you want._”

He knew you well. Perfectly, actually. The appeal of bad movies and your favorite little fuzzball when you felt like shit was immeasurable, especially if you could count on Karkat to indulge your constant craving for affection. But you just shook your head marginally, wrapping your arms around Karkat and holding on. “He hates the slime.”

“_Well obviously we get out of the slime, you ingenious fuckhat._” You snorted, and he sighed, dropping his head back. “Do you want me to wake up?”

“You don’t have to.”

“_But you want me to_,” he said, before finally switching to English. “What’s wrong?”

You were quiet. He waited you out, patient. You sighed, and hesitated longer. “...You ever wonder, if like. There’d be anyone who missed you if you disappeared?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“No one would. I mean, I don’t exactly get out that often. No one here is going to miss me, and everyone from our timeline is fucking gone, so that’s that shit answered right fucking there. Jade would get over it, she probably has a million Karkats with all the traveling she does. The Governor would gladly fund the tickets for my departure, that loveless little bastard. It’d just be you.”

“Me?” That gave you some pause, though you didn’t dare lift your head and look up at him, even though you wanted to.

“Yeah. You’d be fucking useless without me and we both know it.” He was teasing you, giving you a small squeeze to counteract the harsh words.

You almost snorted, but then he kept going. “Honestly, though, I don’t think you would either. You’ve got, like, all your other friends and stuff, and your weird human boyfriend. You have other people. You wouldn’t need me.”

For a moment, you’re stunned silent. “...Do you really believe that?”

“...Yeah, sometimes.”

You squeezed him tighter, turning your face into his chest. “Karkat-”

“I know. I know if there was anyone who’d miss me in this stupid, shitfuck of a world we’re living in, it would be you. I think that’s what makes the idea of you not missing me hurt the most.”

“Of course I’d fucking miss you, you dipshit. You’re-”

“I know. And I’d miss you, genius. This is a two way street. So take that pile of steaming, frothing hoofbeast shit and turn it on its head, because chances are it’s all just the exact same shit I’d say about you. Actually, let’s flip this whole stupid conversation on its head! Because knowing you, and knowing me, it’s just going to be a repeat of all of the same, inane, self-deprecating shit, because even after ten years of embarrassing levels of codependency, we’re still too pandead to recognize the fact that, wow! Maybe the person who willingly put themselves within my immediate vicinity for a full fucking decade actually likes me! But guess what, you miserable nightmare of a slimy moron. You’re important to me! I know, it’s fucking stunning, don’t stammer out your insecurities all at once, but it is the unfortunate fact of the matter. After ten fucking years of subjecting myself to your bullshit, you’ve grown on me- literally. You’re like a horrible growth no amount of magic infomercial special offers will get rid of. At this point, if I ever did get you off of me, I’d have a scar so hideous and ugly it’d never heal or go away, and it might even be so bad that the removal of it paralyzes half of my face, or prevents me from eating properly ever again, or something horrible like that.

“So, actually, Dave, if you ever went mysteriously missing, I wouldn’t miss you. I would find you, hunt you down, and kill you all over again with my own bare fucking hands.”

“Dude, come on. If you’re going to kill me, at least go full feral and rip me apart with the sexy fucked up fangs,” you said, because you had no better ideas on how to deal with the amount of reassurance being dumped on you by the ton.

Karkat jabbed his fingers into your sides, tickling you mercilessly and screaming profanities at you while you shrieked and slapped at his hands.

The moment was broken, but so was the hold that that loneliness had on you. Karkat had always had this way of pushing it back and grounding you again, giving you something to hold onto. He gave you something else to focus on, or helped you put things into perspective, or just reassured you, smoothing over all of the sharp points of hurt until you felt like you could close your eyes again. He took your worries from you and you let him, because you trusted him.


	5. a memory that makes my muse feel special

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin. the mentioned john, his boyfriend, is a friend of mines john from a different timeline, who happens to be alive.

**Dave's PoV**  
  
The truth is, you’re not important.

Both online and offline, you talk a lot of shit about being an influencer, or being famous, or just about how important you are in general. You play up your own vanity and call yourself the king of Flarping, the most important man in someone’s life, the life of the party, the only thing that keeps the conversation going.

However, you know for a fact that your life has never and will never mean anything. How can it, when you were so unlikeable your own family hated you, and so worthless you couldn’t save the people most important to you, and so uninteresting that even the people you cared about most barely put in the time to see you?

The value you hold on your own life is so small it’s insignificant. You’re one dead Dave among thousands, millions, god even knows how many. Nothing you do will ever fully set you apart from all the other failures you’ve been, no matter how hard you try, and you know that intimately. There are other Daves who DJ, other Daves who live with Karkat, other Daves with tentacle tattoos, other Daves who found themselves dating living Johns even though they were dead. Nothing you do is original. Nothing you do is special. As Karkat reminds you constantly, you can’t even attribute the death of your timeline to yourself. Nothing you ever did or will do will be significant, so really, why do you matter at all?

You’ve heard enough reassurances to know that many people will tell you otherwise if you dared to voice your concerns, that they’ll lie and exaggerate to make you feel better about it. So you don’t. And you pretend like you’re something special.

Sometimes, though, you feel like you could be. Not on the large scale, of course, but maybe just to a few people. Just on occasion.

Sometimes John made you feel like you were everything, in those few moments when you had him all to yourself and he treated you like you were something deserving of love. He’d trace his lips over your tattoos and blush when you kissed his knuckles and you felt like you meant something to him. Sometimes he’d get defensive or jealous of you and you felt like you were worth it to him, like he could’ve had anything and he still chose you.

But those moments were few and far in between, and getting further, lately.

There were nights when that got to you- when the loneliness crept in and filled up all the breaks in you, weighing you down until you felt like you couldn’t move or breathe. The horrors sung to you and you believed them, knowing you were nothing.

Those nights, you found your way to Karkat’s room. He never liked being woken up and he’d bitch the whole way about it, but he’d let you topple into his recooperacoon and hold onto you when you forced your way into his space. Sometimes he’d fall back asleep mid-grumble, and sometimes he’d force himself to stay awake long enough to ask if you were okay, and if you needed to talk about it.

Karkat made you feel important. Even when nothing else ever did.

For ten years, minus a brief period of confusion, Karkat put up with sharing the same space as you. He showed you so many Alternian romance movies, you were pretty sure you’d seen every one in existence. He taught you Alternian, even if you still couldn’t speak it, and he taught you how to cook worth a shit and keep a house clean. He let you draw dicks on the walls and let you sample his voice and those weird alien noises for your music. He bumped you in the halls and screamed if you tickled him. He’d throw flour at you while you cooked and then get mad that there was flour everywhere later.

When you were so tired you couldn’t get out of bed anymore, he woke you up by dropping the tiniest little ball of fur you’d ever seen on your face and telling you it was your responsibility to make sure it didn’t die. When you went so long without sleeping that you fell asleep in the kitchen while making food and accidentally set the stove on fire, he put it out and dreamed the wreckage worse so that when you woke up you thought you’d burned down the kitchen around yourself (and even though you know the truth, you don’t cook while you’re sleepy anymore). When you first forced yourself to admit, out loud, that you were bi, Karkat reassured you and supported you even though you knew he thought human sexuality was stupid (and then he said it was stupid anyway, but you’d known he would). When you first admitted that maybe Bro wasn’t that cool, Karkat said something long-winded and weird enough to make you laugh, even though you felt like crying. When everyone else was dead and gone, and you found Karkat and Jade, Karkat flat out refused to let go of you for days straight.

  
  
You were his only Dave. You were the only one that really mattered to him and one of the most important people in his life, and he made you feel like it.

Now, that’s pretty much a given. Karkat told you you mattered to him and you believed him, wholly and completely, with a trust so strong it made your heart ache to think too much about.

You remember when you were alive, though, and everything was more complicated. You were young, and everything you knew had just recently been flipped on its head. You knew you were destined for battle, but you had years to wait for it and the ticking in your head that counted down towards it made you feel insane. Your ex-girlfriend got sick of you, your sister’s patience with you was running out, your best friends were off with some stupid bird alt of yours, and the only person who ever seemed to like having you around anymore was the Mayor. You were bored and alone, so you threw yourself into building Cantown, because at least the Mayor smiled at you when you came over.

You remember when you started to pick up on how alone Karkat was. How he started to come past to antagonize you more and more often, how you never saw him with anyone, just sitting in a corner reading or watching something on his own. You remember when you invited him to help with the building of Cantown and he told you in no uncertain terms to shove one of the cans so far up your asshole it came out of your throat. You remember when he slowly started to show up more and more and awkwardly begin helping.

Gradually, you spent more and more time together. It never really occurred to you that Karkat might like you, though. In fact, at the time, it seemed pretty clear to you that he actually couldn’t stand you, at all. He put up with you just because there was no one else to spend time with, and he said as much to you multiple times. He’d rather sit around and watch trashy romance movies with Kanaya, or even Rose, he told you. He built a fort with you because you made him, and he read shitty books to you because you made him, and the Mayor sided with you so he had to. He hung out with you just because you were with the Mayor, and he played nice just because the Mayor liked you.

Except, sometimes the Mayor wasn’t with you. Sometimes it was just the two of you hanging out, all on your own. Then, somewhere along the line, sometimes became most of the time. You’d started to figure he did like you, but you still never would’ve classified yourself as important to him.

That changed when, for the first time, maybe ever, Kanaya came and found you in Cantown. The Mayor was off doing something else, so it was just the two of you, and you’d been positive Karkat would leave you on the spot to hang out with her. She’d wanted help with something. You can’t remember what it was anymore, but you know it had to do with Rose. You’d figured, being the sucker for romance Karkat was, and how much he’d missed Kanaya, he’d jump up in a second and follow her out.

Instead, he told her to figure it out herself. He said he was busy doing stuff with you, and shooed her off. He chose you, over one of his best friends of god knows how long.

You know, and you knew, that it wasn’t really that big of a deal, but Karkat must’ve seen the surprise on your face anyway because he grumbled a string of insults pertaining to your low intelligence and emotional complexity and wouldn’t look at you for the next half an hour. You couldn’t help but feel just the slightest bit smug. Though you tried to ignore it, there was something twisting around in your chest, squeezing your heart tightly. For the first time, you felt like you might be important to Karkat.


	6. a memory that makes my muse sad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what it says on the tin. an expansion of daves feelings on his timelines rose, who he lost track of after dying

**Dave's PoV**  
  
See, you don’t really do crying. Sometimes you tear up a little when you laugh particularly hard, but it’s a very rare thing. Crying in general for you is very rare, regardless of the emotion behind it. The last time you cried, you were given a dinosaur. The time before that? You’re not even sure.

You don’t really do sadness anymore, either. Sadness, you’ve found, is generally the hardest emotion to deal with and makes you the weakest, and you’re also just at a point in your life where you don’t have it in you to be sad. Instead, you feel tired, or angry.

You’re sure Rose would have some very interesting things to say about that. And by interesting, you mean the kind of stuff that makes you feel viscerally uncomfortable and leaves you wanting to stick your fingers in your ears and scream, “LA LA LA LA LA,” until it stops.

You don’t like thinking about Rose. In the three years that you knew her in person, she repeatedly ditched you for her hot alien girlfriend, ignored you, interrogated you about things that made you uncomfortable, made upsetting implications about your life, and drove you up the wall and back down again.

She was family and there was nothing you wouldn’t have done for her.

However, having family wasn’t really something that ever worked out for you. Your guardian was nothing short of The Worst, ever, and from what you’d gathered Rose’s wasn’t exactly peaches and cream either. Your trust that their alternates wouldn’t be the same was little-to-none, and your brief time mistakenly calling an alternate of Bro your brother was enough to solidify that idea, possibly forever. It was also enough to turn you off from the idea of calling anyone else your sibling in general. The only exception to this long string of horrible family members was Rose, and you lost her forever seven years ago.

You like to pretend that’s not a problem. Having family kind of sucks ass, in your experience, so there’s no real reason to want the only person you ever felt comfortable calling family around. Rose annoyed you constantly, too. And, it’s been seven years. You’re so beyond over it. It was a whole lifetime ago. It’d be silly to still miss her.

When Kanaya told you she’d never caught sight of her, you didn’t even flinch, just taking it with a calm nod. Neither of you ever mentioned her again.

You pretend that she was a nightmare so you don’t have to think about how much you liked having her around, and how much you miss her.

Unfortunately, though, there’s no hiding from it at night, when your mind runs wild and preys on all the thoughts you promised yourself you wouldn’t think about. Every single goddamn memory of her you have makes your heart and head hurt.

Worst of all is when you think about the very first time you died. You’d known you were going to die, with complete certainty. You chose to die with her, just so she wouldn’t be alone. And at the end, when the smoke cleared, you were together.

It seems cruel and unfair it didn’t happen again.


	7. Dave: Wake Yourself Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on dave's depression and dealing with getting dumped. tw this chapter for major themes of depression and hintings of death contemplation and suicide ideation

You arrive in the morning, just in time to nod to Jade as she heads out. Not that Jade knows it’s morning. You’re the only one around here with any real sense of time in this nonsensical void, and, given the way how dreambubbles are, she could even be experiencing the passage of time in a wholly different way than you. You’ve given up trying to play timekeeper.

Timekeeper. Clockstopper. Ugh. Your head always finds a way to circle back around to him, but you brush it aside again.

You go through your morning routine, even though it’s not your morning routine at all, and for you it’s really sometime after lunch. You feed the Governor, because he’s the most important, and then you feed yourself. You get sick, and you don’t stop feeling nauseous afterward. You devote an entire hour to lying on the couch with the Governor- your beloved, precious baby, who you would do anything for- and he barely tolerates you.

Once you lie down, you don’t want to get up again.

For someone who you claimed grounded you, gravity sure feels a lot heavier without him. Some days it feels like there’s a magnet under your bed and a sheet of metal in your back, and try as you might, you just can’t get up. Some days it feels like the world spins under your feet, and sometimes you don’t feel like there’s a world at all. Were you ever stupid enough to say he was your world? You don’t remember, but he’s certainly gone now.

At least with this conversation, you know where it’s going. That’s the one nice thing about this whole shitfest. You know exactly what’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen, and exactly how he’s going to react. There’s no inexplicable events here. Nothing unplanned happens. When the time rolls around to close to noon (not that anyone knows that but you), you decide it’s finally time to have that conversation.

You scoop up the Governor and make your way to Karkat’s room.

Karkat gives you a look when you come in, disapproval written plain on his face. You already know how he feels about this, and he knows you know. At least this time he seems too exhausted to give you the spiel again. You want to go over and beg for attention and comfort. You know you could hang off of him until he gives. But, you don’t.

You look at the piece of shit passed out in a heap of Karkat’s blankets on the floor. That arrogant, whiny, needy, childish thing, who can’t even drag himself out of bed in the mornings, so you have to do it for him. You sigh heavily and plop down next to him, setting the Governor right on his face. “Get up. I know you’re awake.”

You, from half a day earlier, fumble tiredly for your cat. Your double squeezes the Governor to his chest, rolling over onto his side and pressing his face into the Governor’s fur. You remember how warm the cat is, and how just the feel of him brought you so much comfort you felt like you could cry. “God. Do I have to.”

“Yeah. Get up. You have to feed Snowball.”

“Fuck.”

“Uh huh. Up.” You slap his ass and get to your feet. “If you don’t get up, you know I’m gonna come back again, so you might as well just do it now. You know you have to.”

He groans at you, because he knows you’re right. Because he’s you.

You know he’ll get up in five minutes, because you’re him. You ruffle Karkat’s hair up before you go, and he grumbles something about cat hands. You snort at him, and pop back to your own time.

**==> Be the other you.**

You really, really, do not want to be been right now. In fact, you’d like it very much if you didn’t have to be, at all, period. Your other self slapped you way harder than was necessary, you’re really tired, and your cat keeps squirming to be let go. You’d joke that you want to die, but maybe if you were alive, your stupid ex would’ve wanted you.

God, you have to stop thinking about him.

Your other self was right, you need to get up. Lying on the floor like a sadsack isn’t getting you anywhere except Misery Town. You just ended up making yourself more tired. It’s time to get up. Now. And you were going to get up. Absolutely. You just had to…

Nope. You hold the Governor closer and shut your eyes.

**==> Get up, you depressed sack of shit.**

You get up five minutes later, when the Governor finally squirms free and goes running off. It’s with a heavy sigh that you drag yourself to your feet and stumble over to Karkat’s chair. He looks busy, typing something up, but you can’t really bring yourself to even snoop. You just drape yourself over the back of the chair and his shoulders, shutting your eyes and pressing your face into his warm, soft sweater.

Ever your number one indulger, Karkat runs his fingers through your hair with a sigh. “Don’t you go falling asleep on me. You’ve already time traveled once today and if I see one more alt of yours within the next twenty-four hours I’m going to shove my strut pedal so far up your spinal crevice you’ll be sneezing dirt out of your auricular spongeclouts. I’ve had enough of that shit. It’s not healthy!”

You hum, not really listening.

He sighs again. After a moment, he kisses the side of your head, and nudges you. “Go feed your demon.”

It’s your turn to sigh. You don’t want to, but you do, leaving him to go feed your _other_ precious baby.

Sometimes, you don’t know if you’d ever get up if you didn’t have your cats to take care of. It’s one thing to let yourself rot and fester, but you could never, ever, let the same happen to your cats. It’s not fair to them. They’re such tiny creatures, with no idea of the world they live in, and they _need_ you. You can’t stay in bed all day when you have little lives depending on you. You’re sure Karkat knew that when he got you the Governor.

Plus, there’s something healing about holding onto something so soft and small, and feeling the Governor’s fast little heartbeat pounding against your hands. Every time he deigns you worthy of his presence and rubs up against you, or purrs when you pet him, you can feel the moment when your heart melts into a goddamn puddle. He makes carrying on worth it.

So does Snowball. As you sit on a log and watch her chase the mouse through the underbrush, you find yourself marveling for the thousandth time at this goddamn fossil come to life. She’s a silly childhood dream come true and every time you look at her your heart seizes up a bit with pure, unadulterated joy. You fucking _love_ dinosaurs. And now you have one. You have a real, actual, tyrannosaurus rex in your fucking house. Baby Dave would be shitting his pants. _Adult_ Dave is shitting his pants. And she’s so tiny and cute, you can just scoop her up and hold her. You shouldn’t, because she’s super totally dangerous, but she lets you because you feed her. It’s funny how something so tiny can make you so goddamn happy.

She is pretty gross, though. When she catches her mouse, you can hear the shriek and the crunch. After a while, she comes trotting up to you happily, her snout covered in blood and gore. You sigh, and fail to hold back a snort, reaching out to scratch her head. You let another mouse go and she goes whipping away to catch it, fast enough to smack your leg with her tail.

You love her so much.

After feeding Snowball, you really start on your morning routine. You make yourself shower and get dressed, even though you don’t want to, and you eat something, even though you’re not actually hungry. You check through messages, check out what you reblogged earlier, and make a mental note to reblog all the same things. You play with the Governor until he’s worn out and you pet him until he gets bored of you and walks away. You procrastinate for an hour before you finally decide it’s time to complete the loop.

**==> Go back to the beginning.**


	8. touch prompt- jake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: put a hand on my muse's back to steer them somewhere. the jake is a friend's

You’re very quickly learning that Jakes care even more about their movies than John. You didn’t think that was possible, before him. You also didn’t think anyone could have worse taste in movies than John. However, you stand completely and utterly corrected, and every day you’re a little more blown away by just how far this hole goes.

You are seriously, genuinely, endlessly stunned by Jake’s enthusiasm. The very second he laid eyes on you, he was nearly bouncing, to watch a movie, for god’s sake. To watch Avatar. As someone who’s never been particularly expressive, and finds it difficult to really care about anything at all anymore, you constantly find yourself drawn to people like this- people who are just so goddamn shamelessly passionate. They amaze you, like a child who’s just seen a clear night’s sky for the first time.

You find yourself trying not to laugh at Jake as he ushers you in, asking him, “What about the popcorn? The blankets? The drinks? The copious amounts of candy we swear are just for a little snack but we end up eating more of than the actual popcorn? Don’t tell me you just sit and watch movies like some kind of animal. A connoisseur such as yourself? Jake, I’m disappointed.”

“I’ve got it all handled! Don’t you worry.” His hand lands on your back, warm and firm as he steers you over to the couch. Your socked feet slide on the floor, and you give up on your attempts to turn back for the kitchen.

“Right, because all you need to watch movies is a little more wine and a little less clothing,” you tease him, but you let him push you to the couch, and flop on down.

“Always better with company,” he jokes. But, when he flops down next to you, he ejects a blanket and a bowl of popcorn from his sylladex, proving that, yeah, you probably shouldn’t have ever even doubted him. Of fucking course he has it all on him. Movie fans is the same. He waves a pack of licorice at you, and you snatch it up in a second. “I hope you’re ready for the movie of the century.”

“Jake, bro, I don’t think anything could prepare me for this.” You tear into the package, already shoving a piece in your mouth. They’ll be gone before the title screen, and poor Jake doesn’t have enough experience with you to know.

But, y’know, maybe you’re the poor one, for even bringing up Avatar around him in the first place. You’ve got the feeling this will be a long movie.


	9. touch prompt- vinny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: pin my muse with their hands behind their back. vinny is a fantroll of a friend. i think this is the first time ive mentioned kris? kris is the fankid of a friend.

Over the course of your life, a pin has become an unfortunately familiar position. Usually, such pins involved a sword, and a great deal of blood. You’re lucky in that Vinny actually likes you, and isn’t particularly interested in scraping you up. You’re also lucky in that you’re fucking dead, and you’re pretty sure any damage he does to you won’t really last. Though it kind of seem to be sticking while you’re here. Kris’s magic works in weird and altogether confusing ways, but you’ve learned not to question it.

Either way, when he pins you, you’re mostly just exhausted. Trolls are unfortunately strong by nature, and are generally always from nations full of strife, so they know a thing or two about fighting. You know with just one tug that there’s no way in hell you’re getting out of this until he lets you, so you shut your eyes and take in slow breaths, trying to regulate your breathing again. Dirt and rocks press against your cheek and shoulders, and you carefully let your knees slide out from under you so you’re just lying on your stomach and it doesn’t feel quite so uncomfortable. Plus, it’s kind of undignified, kneeling with your face in the dirt, and you don’t really need to give Vinny that view. You blow some hair and dirt away from your face, and say, “I give.”

He chuckles and lets go, taking his weight off of you and getting back to his feet.

It’s a relief to get your hands back, and you roll over and sit up, rolling your shoulders. He offers out his hand, and you take it without hesitation, letting him pull you back to your feet. …God, trolls are so strong. Especially highbloods. You pretend like that’s not really hot.

You ruffle your hair to shake the dirt out, and when he apologizes, you just wave him off. “All part of the game. Seems like you’ve still got it. Or maybe I’m even more out of practice than you are.” You’re pretty sure he’s just stronger than you.


	10. touch prompt- rohais

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: grip my muse by the back of their neck. rohais is a rose, belonging to a friend. the karkat is just dave's karkat. touching just a little here on dave's Rose Hangups.

She has an infuriatingly calm presence about her, sitting in your living room like it’s nothing at all. Like this is something she does regularly, dropping by the homes of her brother’s ghosts. It could be, for all you know, but then, you’ve hardly ever seen her interact with a Dave that wasn’t you. Or Dicksy, you guess, but you try not to think about that.

You’re obnoxiously aware of the way your leg twitches and bounces with nervous energy. You’re obnoxiously aware that she must be aware, and probably already making judgments about your mental state over it. You rub your thumb over a scar that laces across the palm of your opposite hand and try to focus on what she’s saying.

To Karkat, of all people, not even you. Trust the one time he happens upon your visitor for it to be Rohais. You feel nonexistent and uncomfortably present all at the same time. Karkat may not have pupils for you to track, but you know his eyes flick to you more than once, and you know he’s picking apart the situation at least as well as she is. You wish he’d just focus on her.

For a second, you hear pages turning, voices echoing in a room that feels so big and dark and empty when you’re not pressed into an armchair with someone, listening to your idiot sister and best friend argue about bad pornography.

You’re jerked out of it when Rohais’s hand lands on the back of your neck, squeezing gently. She pulls you upright, and you realize how far you’ve slouched forward, leaning heavily on your knees for support while you stared at nothing. Her voice breaks through the cloud; “Latte.”

You blink. You feel exhausted suddenly and you don’t know why. Your sister’s strange alt comes back into focus in your eye. “Sup?”

“Tell me, honestly, that you haven’t actually been converted to Alternian romance.”

“It’s better and he knows it!” Karkat cuts in before you can answer, irritable as ever. He doesn’t give you some stupid pitying look, and you’re grateful for it, but you can feel it there, hovering just below the surface when he next glances at you.

“No, dude. Alternian romcoms are shit,” you say, and watch him puff up with fury.

Rohais looks vaguely smug. “Thought so.”

This time, when they launch back into their argument, they loop you in. You know it’s purposeful. You can feel it. You hate it. But, on some level, you’re grateful for it too.

It still doesn’t stop the way phantoms flicker over them, bickering over open books in a makeshift library eight years ago. But it helps. A little. 


	11. ROSE: Reconnect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my friend's fankid, kris, managed to find dave's rose and give her his number. after eight years, she reaches out to him again. or, me, trying to figure out what the fuck tae accidentally did to my timeline.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you've been trying to send a single text for hours.

You have, rather wisely, opted to have this little breakdown within the safety of your own house. If Dirk or Roxy thought it was weird you weren't hanging around today, they didn't mention it. That's for the best. The last thing you want is for either of them to catch onto your little freak-out sesh and ask you what's up, putting you in a position where you have to make that deliberate choice to either lie or tell them everything. It's easier for now to just avoid mentioning it at all.

You know that at some point, you will have to tell them. You can't keep this from them forever. It'd be so unfair, and so difficult to hide. The three of you are thick as thieves, and most things get dragged into the light at some point or another, given how hard you and Dirk dig. Plus, you know they'd want to meet him. You know how much he means to them, even though they've never met him before. You couldn’t possibly deny them this. 

But, for now, you selfishly keep this to yourself. Things are complicated enough as they are without adding your pseudo-parents into the fray. You’ll tell them later, but you want a chance to figure this out for yourself first. 

You love Dirk and Roxy. You do. So much. They're your family and they mean everything to you. But, at the same time, they're not _Dave._ They didn't know you through the game. They don't know Kanaya, or Karkat, or what it was like to live in a world full of people. They idolize their guardians. And, they've known each other so much longer than they've known you. You've spent almost your whole death feeling like a third wheel, an odd one out, with no one you knew from before who would understand exactly what you went through. You can't stand the idea of them immediately butting in on this and making it about them.

Not that they would on purpose. But you remember what it was like to first meet them, and what a hard time you had with accommodating them into your idea of family and what your parents were like. To say it was a lot to deal with would be putting it very lightly. It was overwhelming. You know if you introduced them to Dave, his attention would immediately be ripped away from you.

For now, you just want a chance to reconnect, on your own terms, without complications. You want Dave's attention without fighting your parents for it. You want to be sure that you'll have a chance to bond with him again without it being jeopardized by outside factors. You've spent far too long wishing you had your brother again for anything to mess this up. You can't lose him twice. Dirk and Roxy have each other. You just want this.

You sigh heavily and dig a throw pillow out from behind you so you can roll over onto your back. You hold your phone over your head and squint at the chat box you've had open for the last several hours. It's completely empty, devoid even of the conversations you used to have so long ago. Somehow that makes it even harder to put those first words out into the world.

Unfortunately, Kris wasn't much help in deducing how much he's changed. You have no idea, at all, what you'll be throwing yourself into. You almost wish you'd gotten Karkat's number instead, because he could surely tell you everything, and without the added complications of Family. But, you were also pretty sure Dave would be offended if you messaged him second. Or, maybe that's just you. 

The comfortable cushions of your bed do nothing to ease your nerves. This is your first text to your long-lost brother, who you haven’t seen in years and years. He could probably tell you exactly how long it’s been, but you have no idea. However long it’s been, it’s too long. You know this text must be good. It’ll be your first connection to him. It’ll dictate how everything else goes after. 

In reality, it’s probably not that big of a deal, but it definitely feels like it is. It feels momentous. The empty chat is a terrifying obstacle, a boss on this level of your life that you’re too scared to make the first move against, for fear of what punches will come after. You know you’re overthinking it, but you can’t seem to stop. The fact that your Vision isn’t helping you at all with it doesn’t make you feel any better about any of this.

You take a deep breath. You tell yourself it’s like jumping into a pool. You need to just take that first step, and everything else will come rushing after. You can’t teeter on the edge forever. It’ll only make you more and more nervous.

YOU: Is this the number of Dave “Latte” Strider?

You’re expecting to have to wait forever for a reply. You feel like that would be the appropriate outcome of this; stressing over what he’ll say for hours and hours, worrying yourself into a fit over whether it’s even the right number, or if Kris was just pulling your leg. However, your phone dings so fast it startles you, and a new message pops up in the chat.

DAVE: whoa stranger danger

DAVE: whos asking

You stare at the words on your screen, gripping your phone so tight you hear your case creak in protest. It’s definitely a Dave. It could be your Dave. It could really be him. After all this fucking time, it could actually be him. You need to remind yourself to keep breathing.

YOU: This is Rose.

YOU: If Kris is to be believed, I may be the Rose from your timeline.

DAVE: what

YOU: This is Latte, isn’t it?

DAVE: yeah

DAVE: what the fuck though

DAVE: like for real

DAVE: like are you actually or like is this some kind of really elaborate fucked up prank

DAVE: because kris didnt say shit about meeting my rose and that kinda seems like bs

YOU: I assume he didn’t want to steal my thunder. But, you could ask him.

DAVE: i fuckin will thank you

There’s a pause. You’re trying to figure out what to say, when another bubble pops up in the chat from him.

DAVE: how do i know youre actually my rose like

DAVE: did kris make the connection or are you just hunting down random daves and running them through a questionnaire until you hit the mil

DAVE: mil being million dollar prize obv

DAVE: because im a fucking prize

DAVE: thats the implication here

YOU: If by “made the connection” you mean, used his powers to determine who my Dave was at my request and give me your number, yes.

DAVE: goddamn

YOU: Indeed.

> DAVE: Have a fucking breakdown.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are freaking the fuck out.

You need to move, but there's nowhere to go, so you hop up and just pace, back and forth across the room. You have nothing to do with your hands, so they find your skin, scratching hard enough to leave marks, and your hair, digging in and pulling. Usually, you can't get more than a few steps along doing that in Karkat's room, but the recooperacoon in the corner glows silently, void of any sign of your housemate waking up anytime soon.

It's been eight years since you last heard from your sister, and you're having a hard time processing the fact that you might be hearing from her now. No, you are hearing from her. You know Kris can't be wrong. You just can't believe you never thought to ask him before.

Rose found Kris. She found Kris, and through him, she found you. She _looked_ for you. She tracked you down, after eight fucking years, and found you. You couldn't believe it. Your sister, your real, actual, flesh and blood, from your own timeline, had found you and was close enough to talk to Kris, and message you.

You didn't think you _could_ process this fully. If you thought about it too much, you might really lose it.

YOU: ok well obviously i have to see you

YOU: like to verify

YOU: obviously

YOU: we should meet up

UNKNOWN: Obviously.

YOU: your place or mine

UNKNOWN: Yours. 

UNKNOWN: If it's not too much trouble.

YOU: nah that works

YOU: not like i ever have anyone over

YOU: i mean

YOU: i totally have to clear my very busy schedule but i think i can just barely squeeze you in if i cancel my appointment with the queen of england

YOU: you should be grateful im really prioritizing you here

UNKNOWN: Trust me, you have no idea. I'll make sure to bring a housewarming gift.

YOU: if youre gonna bring something fucked up and creepy make it a slab of raw meat so i can at least get some dinner out of it

UNKNOWN: But of course. 

UNKNOWN: How raw?

YOU: the bloodier the better

YOU: if it still has fur and skin and shit that is also acceptable

You wonder if you should tell her the meat is for your dinosaur. You decide it'll be more fun not to.

UNKNOWN: I'll do my best.

UNKNOWN: Any other requests?

YOU: yeah

YOU: bring your top ten most embarrassing baby pics

UNKNOWN: I hope you know, I would only do this for you.

YOU: but youll do it

UNKNOWN: Naturally.

YOU: nice

UNKNOWN: When would you like to meet?

You look over at the recooperacoon. The slime doesn't even have the decency to burble. You still walk over to check, ever hopeful, ever desperate. You're not surprised when it looks like the same disgusting sleep vat as ever, with Karkat buried somewhere inside, but you still manage to be disappointed. 

YOU: i dunno

YOU: i mean unless you suddenly found a way to tell time in the bubbles without time powers i doubt you can time shit anyway

YOU: but uh

YOU: i guess

YOU: now works??

YOU: i mean no ones really here so

UNKNOWN: Hm.

UNKNOWN: I guess it's not as though I have anything going on here. 

UNKNOWN: I'll need your coordinates, though. 

Your coordinates have been sent!

YOU: done

UNKNOWN: Perfect. I'll be over in a minute.

Fuck. You close the chat and flashstep out of the room to start cleaning.

You've let the place go, since Karkat started hibernating. The knowledge that he will eventually wake up makes you at least try to keep it clean, because you don't want or need that to be something he stresses out over, but you're just not good at it without Karkat reminding you. Especially like this. You're so fucking tired and stressed and worried all the time, it's hard to get up the motivation to do a big cleaning.

Rose visiting, however, gives you the fear you need to at least make a dent in it. You throw away any trash, put away the blankets, turn off the TV, the music, and make sure your "cats" are presentable. Future yous run around in a panic to help, and you don't dare ask them how long it'll take her to show up, or if it's really her, or how things will go. 

They all suddenly disappear, and then you hear the knock. In seconds, you've flashstepped to the door, and pulled it open, without even thinking of how stupid and desperate you probably seem. You start to look even dumber when you just stand there and stare at her, instead of inviting her in.

The first thing you notice is her hair. She let it grow out. It's no longer bleached and shaved close to her head. It poofs out around her head in a frizzy mess of brown, all natural, and just barely held back with a thick headband. Her eyes are the same white as yours, and you know they reflect the same stunned-stupid look of yours, too. She hasn't grown a single inch, but she looks older in a way you can't quite put into words. It's her, though. There's no mistaking it.

You notice her eyes are watery.

You force yourself to speak. "I think you got shorter."

She laughs, and the sound comes out sort of startled, like she hadn't been expecting it. She gives you a smile that's far too warm, and far too sad, and your heart aches. "No, you just grew, you giant. Now are you going to let me in, or are we going to stand here and gawk at each other on the porch all day?"

Your face feels hot when you step back, holding the door open for her. "Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”

It’s only after you lead her into the living room that you remember you drew dicks on the walls.

> ROSE: Comment on the dicks. 

As you follow this older version of your brother through his house, you cannot, for the life of you, stop staring. You find yourself staring at him, at the knickknacks on the shelves, at the layout of the house, and the drawings all over the walls. He doesn’t look that much different- he cut his hair, and he grew- but the house tells you what you can’t see on the surface. 

For starters, he’s obviously living with Karkat. The house is very much _not_ his apartment. The design of the house itself is totally Alternian, but there’s too many signs of human life inside for it to _not_ be where he’s living. The murals have Dave written all over them, literally and figuratively. You think you recognize the hive, fuzzily, as one you might associate with Karkat, but mostly you assume it’s him because Kris said Dave was still in contact with your Karkat. It’s surprisingly clean, for Dave, but you don’t know if that’s how it usually looks, or if he cleaned before you got here. You think it might be a mix, given what a cleanfreak you knew Karkat to be. 

Your eyes linger on the few pictures, here and there, in the house. Most of them were in exceptionally cheesy frames, and most were of a black cat with two tails. To your great disappointment, there were none of the house’s occupants. Not here, at least.

Instead, to get a better idea of the life Dave was living, you need to look at the art. As you walk through to the living room, you say, “I’m surprised Karkat let you get away with drawing so many dicks.”

Dave gives you a funny look over his shoulder for that. “I didn’t tell you I lived with him. And, he doesn’t. Not really. He throws a big fit about each and every one, but there’s not really a lot he can do about it. I don’t think he minds that much, anyway. Or if he does, he doesn’t enough that he’s willing to do something about it.”

“You didn’t have to. Kris mentioned you were in contact with Jade and Karkat, and I put the pieces together. Living in a hive isn’t exactly the most subtle living choice.” You had your assumptions as to why he did it, though. Sometimes you thought you’d be happier too, if you weren’t always so haunted by your childhood home and the shadows that walked the halls there.

“Jade, Karkat, and Kanaya. We think. We’re pretty sure it’s her. Jade lives right next door.”

You trip on nothing, and even though you’re sure you would’ve caught yourself, you find Dave’s hands on your shoulders, steadying you. Your face feels hot, suddenly. Awkwardly, you straighten back up, and he drops his hands.

Neither of you talk about it. For that, you’re grateful.

You collapse onto the couch, and Dave, after some hesitation, sits by you, leaving a respectable distance between the two of you. 

You wish you knew what to say.

Dave pulls his feet up, wrapping his arms around his knees. It’s an old habit. You remember it. He never could sit still, or sit proper, and it doesn’t seem as though that’s changed. “So, how’s death treating you?”

Possibly the most awkward icebreaker he could’ve chosen, but you still roll with it. You shrug. “As it does anyone. I’ve more or less accepted it. But, I suppose the more pertinent question is, what have I been up to, and what’s changed, yes?”

Dave nods, once. “Yeah.”

You know he wants to know the same thing you do. So, you give him the downlow. “I’ve mostly been working on honing my powers, writing, and reevaluating my life. I don’t know that there’s much to report beyond that. I’ve likely changed, yes, but in subtle ways I can’t find the words to communicate. And you?”

“Started a dreambubble radio station. I’m not great about manning it, though. Think I gotta get more employees or whatever, even with my BS powers. I stopped using mine for like, a hot second. I’m working on getting back into it.”

You go back and forth like that, shooting the shit, going over bland interests and small changes. It’s the most obvious introductory conversation ever, and you feel the wall of tension between you far too intimately. Still, you refuse to believe it’s been too long. You keep trying.

You hit gold when you ask about the cat and get him started on his pets. Which, apparently, he has two of. He introduces you to one; a very small t-rex, with its own room in the house, lovingly adapted to suit her. He lights up when he talks about her, talking with his hands animatedly and running his mouth the way you remember him doing best. You feel like that’s the first time you see him, that day; when he’s cooing quietly at this prehistoric, and yet cat-like beast. The love he has for her radiates from him so strongly you find yourself hiding a grin, and you crouch down with him to feel her scaly skin.

Conversation flows a little easier after that. Snowball, as he calls her, seems to calm him down, and he talks easier and more readily while he’s holding her in his lap and scratching under her chin. You talk to him about his photography, about your writing, about music, social media, whatever you think of.

You ask about Karkat and Jade, and somehow, the conversation starts to feel more serious. The way he talks about them, you know he loves them more than anything. He tells you about the dumb shit they do, how they’ve grown, the things they get up to around the house, how their dynamic flows now. He has an easier time talking about them than himself, and you know the feeling all too well. But you get the feeling he’s holding back. There are subjects he doesn’t want to broach; things he doesn’t want to say. You both tactfully avoid the subject of Kanaya.

Then he asks you if you ever found anyone.

“I found our parents,” you confess, finally. “Or, our parents’ younger alternates, Dirk and Roxy. I’ve been living next door to them more or less since I died. I haven’t ever found anyone else.”

You imagine his face is a perfect copy of yours when you tripped on nothing, as, in the middle of throwing a stick for Snowball, he tenses, and the stick falls short. Snowball still runs to get it, and he watches her, fingers curled into tight fists. There’s a tension in his shoulders you’ve learned to notice in Dirk, but forgotten how to find in him. He doesn’t so much as glance your way, and his jaw shifts and tightens like he’s chewing on which words he wants to say. 

You could've dropped it there. You could've changed the subject and moved on. You could have dodged all of it, and part of you felt like you should.

You know how he feels. You remember how you felt when you picked up on that unmistakable resemblance, when Roxy became a part of your life, and you had to somehow settle that with your perception of your mother. You say, "When I first met Dirk, I really only bothered to deal with him because he was the closest I could get to you." 

Finally, he looks over at you. You can't read his expression at all, but you don't think you need to. 

He's still not talking, though, so you continue, "It took me years to get used to Roxy. I resented them a lot, actually. I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to you, but I can, at times, be very petty." He scoffs, and you give him a dry smile. "I suspect I wasn't the only one projecting. When Roxy showed up, Dirk didn't need me to fill in anymore."

"You're really selling them right now, you know," he says.

"I know. I started out very skeptical of them both. I felt like I tolerated them at best, third-wheeled for them at worst. Roxy reminded me too much of my mother, and both of them reminded me too much of you. I couldn't make myself live with them. I still don't live with them.

"However, with time, I have grown to recognize them as their own people, apart from our parents. I see Roxy not as my mom, but as a friend. Though they have a few odd similarities, they're not the same, and I realized it wasn't fair to me to project my feelings onto them. And I like them. I trust them."

"I don't." He looks like he said it before he had a chance to think about it. The slightest amount of regret colors his expression. 

"That's perfectly fine." You nod, reasonably. "I wouldn't ask you to. You don't have to meet them, either. In fact, I think I'd advise you just take it one long lost family member at a time." Again, you're being selfish. At the same time, though, it's obvious Dave has no interest in it anyway. Not now, at least. Maybe one day.

“I plan on it.” He snaps his fingers at Snowball to get her attention, and you get the impression that’s the end of the conversation.

Maybe one day, you’ll talk to him about it more, when you know him better again.

> DAVE: Change the subject.

You really, seriously, do not know what to do with the information that’s been dumped in your lap. You’ve never trusted or liked Dirks, and Roxys have always been on really thin ice for you, so it’s kind of blowing your mind that your own sister, who you thought understood that more than anyone else, is actually living with and getting along with your parents’ alternates. Like, not even ones from a different timeline who lived different lives and maybe weren’t such terrible excuses for parents, but your own Dirk and Roxy.

Maybe you feel betrayed. Maybe you’re angry. Maybe you’re scared. However you feel, it’s complicated, and you don’t want to think about it now. You have enough to think about just with finding Rose again. You don’t need to deal with anything else. 

You scratch along Snowball’s back as she butts up into your fingers and manage to keep your expression from turning totally soft and dopey just at a little affection from her. You find your voice again, somehow. “It’s good you found someone, though. I dunno what I’d do without Karkat and Jade.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Rose nod. She hesitates, and then she does something that really surprises you. She says, “I still missed you, though.”

You were so fucking unprepared for that. Your eyes burn, suddenly, and your chest feels uncomfortable and tight. You don’t know how, but you manage to say, “I missed you too.”

Saying it out loud feels like a mistake. You’ve never admitted that before. Not to Karkat, not to Jade, not even to yourself. You spent _years_ telling yourself she was gone, and that was fine, and you were over it, and you didn’t care. It’d been eight years. How could you still miss her? But, in admitting it, to yourself, and to her, it’s like eight years of grief crashes into you like a wave at full force. You’re so fucking tense, you can’t make yourself keep petting Snowball, because if you move, you might feel an emotion. You’re teetering right on the edge of a breakdown and you can feel it, and all it’ll take is one tiny little push to send you falling.

After a moment, you feel Rose rub your shoulder, mechanically and awkwardly. Then, falteringly, and hesitantly, she wraps her arms around you in the stiffest, most uncomfortable, most awkward hug you’ve ever received. She hugs like an alien trying to replicate human affection with little to no understanding of how it’s done. You have exactly one memory of her ever doing such a thing before, a very long time ago, and it wasn’t any better then. Her hugging skills haven’t improved at _all_.

You laugh, but it’s short, and cuts into a cracked sob halfway through as your chest unexpectedly seizes. The dam you were constructing breaks and you _feel_ the emotion suddenly wash over you, spreading all the way to the very tips of your fingers and toes. Rose pats your back awkwardly, but it doesn’t help at all. 

You’ve missed her so fucking much, and for the first time, you let yourself feel it. Your heart hurts, your breathing’s totally uneven, and even though you don’t cry, you’re shaking so bad you might as well. It _physically_ aches, and the loneliness weighs so heavy on your bones, even though you tried not to feel it. It’s so much, all at once, and it’s really all you can do to turn into her and wrap your arms around her, digging your fingers into her shirt to haul her in closer and shove your face into her shoulder.

She seems surprised, but she holds on tighter. She squeezes you so tight it’s actually uncomfortable and kind of painful, and it’s dumb, how bad she is at hugging. But you can feel her tears landing in your hair and on your shoulder, and you know she’s trying her best. Her breathing’s all shaky too, but just like you, she’s trying to keep it together as much as she can. That’s how you are.

There’s a lot of things you _want_ to say to her. You want to tell her how hard it’s been, how much you hate being dead, how you feel like a failure, how much you missed her, how much you miss Karkat, how you’re so fucking scared all the time for no reason. You want to tell her how important she is, how much she means to you, how big the hole she left was. You know you can’t say any of that, though, so instead you don’t say anything.

She doesn’t say anything either. You’re pretty sure if she tried, or if you pushed her, she’d start full-on sobbing. You’re both in a bad enough state as it is without pushing it, and honestly, neither of you have been very good at comforting people. It’s a mess you can avoid, and so should.

Instead, you just sit in silence. It’s not the most comfortable hug you’ve ever had, but the silence is comfortable enough. It lets you relax again, though that comes slow, and fractured. But you breathe deep, inhaling the scent of cat fur and spice shampoo that sticks to her shirt and committing it to memory. You feel Rose’s breathing even out again and feel her shift to wipe her eyes. Slowly, you wrap your head around the fact that you have her back in your life. 

It’s going to take some adjusting. You know that. But, you’re willing to do whatever you have to to rebuild the bond that faded between you. You make the conscious choice to have her back in your life and know that you’ll do the work required for it. She was once one of your best friends. You’re sure you can make that happen again. 

“Jade’s going to _freak_ out,” you tell her, after a while, your voice muffled against her shoulder.

She snorts out a laugh and squeezes you in her arms. Then, she starts to pull back and let you go, to your disappointment. “So I’d imagine. I can’t wait to see her again.”

You rub at a damp spot on your shoulder as you straighten back up and look over at her. Her eyes are still kind of red and puffy. Her eyeliner has smeared everywhere, and you wonder if she dripped any in your hair. You decide not to mention it, though, because she looks happy. Her smile is too warm and fond for you to know what to do with, but you don’t look away. “Yeah, I’d hope so. ‘Cause, if I don’t tell her about this like, ASAP, she’ll probably kill me.”

“Where is she, anyway?” Rose adds, “So I know how much time I have left before I’m inevitably tackled to the floor.”

“Dunno. Out dicking around and exploring somewhere. It’s like, impossible to keep her inside for too long. She goes fucking nuts over adventuring and meeting people and shit. I swear, she has like, so many friends. It’s so weird. Karkat and I are fucking hermits.”

“I’d judge if I was in any place to.” Rose leans back on her hands, watching the bushes rustle as your dinosaur goes running in and out of them.

“Fair.”

“If Karkat’s such a hermit, where is he? You said you were the only one here.”

Ah. Your eyes turn up to the ceiling, and you swallow down the uncomfortable lump in your throat. You really, really, do not want to have a repeat of your conversation with Khar with Rose right now. She does _not_ need to know just how pathetically attached to him you are. She’ll find out one day, but that doesn’t have to be your introductory statement. “Spent the night at a friend’s.” You tell yourself that’s not a lie, and that technically, he is spending the night at a friend’s, if the friend is you. You know it’s totally a fucking lie, but you just can’t have this conversation right now.

If she notices something’s up, she doesn’t say it. “I see. I suppose it’s for the best. I don’t think I could handle two of you at once. Though, of course, I’ll have to arrange a time to meet with both of them soon. Give them my number, will you? Or, help me surprise them. Whichever you think will freak them out more.”

You snort. “Yeah, you got it.”

Somewhere in the house, a door slams, and a voice yells, “DAVE!! I’M HOME!”

You and Rose make eye contact. Rose raises her eyebrows, and you raise yours back at her. A moment passes, and she nods, once.

You cup a hand over your mouth and shout back, “WITH SNOWBALL!”

After several minutes, the door opens, and you and Rose both brace yourselves as she waves to Jade, a little nervously. “Jade. It’s been a long time.”

Jade freezes, with a greeting still on her tongue, and looks from Rose to you. “It’s her,” you confirm.

Jade’s scream is loud enough that your t-rex pops her little head out of the bushes, startled, and you find yourself laughing as your sister is tackled into the dirt. 


	12. allotted one gay thought a week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to just kind of reflect on daves current and past crushes in regards to his current situation, trying to deal with karkats pupation

The pile of pillows and blankets in the corner of Karkat's room is hands down your favorite place to lie around and be miserable. Usually, you'd at least have the comfort of Karkat or the Governor while you sulk, but your traitorous cat is nowhere to be seen, and still, Karkat's recooperacoon offers no sign of him waking up anytime soon. You have to settle for hugging a pillow to your chest and dissociating enough to keep you still. 

You'd just seen Khar off, before heading up here. He'd had something to do, so he couldn't just hang around all day today, but he has been doing that a lot lately. Sometimes it feels like he's over all the fucking time, bugging you and making you watch bad movies and talk about shit you don't want to talk about. You know why.

He hangs around for the same reason Jade does. He worries about you. He pities you. He knows you're in fucking ruins, so he stays with you so he can keep an eye on you and make sure you don't lose your mind pacing trenches in Karkat's floor. He knows how fucking pathetic you are, how scared you are, how lonely you are. He wants to help, but sometimes you have a hard time seeing it as anything but pity. You know if he wasn't so worried and so caring, he'd be off doing better things. 

But, at the same time, you're so fucking grateful. Because, yeah, you are a mess. You're losing your mind without Karkat, and the company distracts you. He's not Karkat, but sometimes it's so easy to just associate them and connect them, especially when he treats you in that gentle way you're only used to from Karkat. In some ways, it makes it easier, and when you're bickering with him about movies you can almost forget about everything with Karkat.

Khar can handle you, and he does, with exasperation and the underlying fondness that makes you call him stupid in a way that's too affectionate to be appropriate. He engages with your rambling and stupid blurtings and keeps you on your toes with things to think about and do, so your head and hands don't get away from you. He indulges you in your constant need for affection and reassures you when you talk about the things you feel stupid saying. He's unjustifiably sweet and you don't deserve it at all, but you soak it up desperately and cling to every bit of friendship he extends to you like a lifeline. You love him more than you ever should- far too much, and it makes your chest ache to think about. He's a better friend than you deserve.

But you just can't stop projecting. You try so hard not to, but you see Karkat in him constantly. You want him to be Karkat and you feel so horrible about it. You want to value him as he is, as himself, but you miss Karkat so much it feels like you see him everywhere. You feel like the worst friend in the world as you cuddle up to Khar on those late nights and find yourself unable to stop imagining that it's Karkat. He reminds you so much of Karkat, it hurts, and some days you just feel like holding onto him and crying. 

You miss Karkat so much.

When John left you, you felt like shit. For weeks and weeks, you barely managed to drag yourself out of bed because you just felt so shitty. He didn't want you and that made you feel worthless. What was the point of getting up, if you were just always such a piece of shit no one wanted you?

You'd never been dumped before. You'd never had your heart broken like that before. You'd never put yourself out there so much for one person and exposed so much of yourself to someone, only to have them decide they didn't like what you had to offer. It felt horrible. 

(Khar and Karkat were the only ones you talked to about it, and the only ones who were there for you. They helped you through it, just like they seem to help you through fucking everything.)

But, even despite how much that sucked, and still sucked, you're getting over it. Break-ups are just a part of life, and, it's not really John's fault if you just… weren't his thing. It hurts, but, it's okay. You're learning to accept that. It still feels weird to see him and talk to him sometimes, but you kind of miss being his friend. You think you could go back to just being that, if he could still stand you. 

This, though. This is so much worse than any of that. 

You can deal with losing a boyfriend. You can deal with losing a friend. You can deal with people in your life coming and going, because for fuck's sake, this is the bubbles, and that's just how life is.

However, you absolutely cannot deal with losing Karkat. You can't lose him. It's fucking tearing you apart, not knowing how long he'll be hibernating and doing his stupid pupation thing for, or if he'll wake up at all. You're terrified something's wrong or something will go wrong, and with Karkat's mutation, who's to say what will happen? 

You can't remember the last time you felt this unbalanced, desperate, scared, sick, or miserable. The house feels so empty without him, and the shadows all seem to get up and move. You hear noises where there are none, and your bedroom's reached the point where you can't live in it anymore, it's so full of swords and puppets. Everything in the house is breaking because you keep accidentally filling things with swords and trash and puppets and traps, and Jade has to keep going through and fixing it all. You don't sleep anymore because all you get is nightmares, and you can barely bring yourself to leave Karkat's room. You've started storing food in there so you don't have to leave, and you ignore the little voice that tells you Karkat will disapprove when he wakes up, because it doesn't fucking matter.

You try to keep your head up and keep going. You reached out to Jade when it got too much, and now Khar and Rose are keeping an eye on you too. You play shitty games and let them drag you around and entertain yourself with idle and stupid conversation on tumblr. You try to stay distracted, stay strong, stay positive.

Karkat will wake up. It's taking a long time, but he will. In the meantime, you just need to keep cleaning the house, and taking care of the cats, and yourself, because if you don't he'll be really angry at you. You can't let yourself go just because he's not here to monitor you. 

Karkat will wake up because you don't fucking know what you'll do if he doesn't.

The thing about Karkat is, he's the most important. Genuinely, honestly, there is no one who knows you like he does, or can hold you together like he does. No one makes you happier, or feels safer. No one can be to you what Karkat is. What Karkat is defies labels, defies logic, defies definition. You've gotten so used to his presence- no, dependent on it, you don't remember how to live without it anymore. 

You've never felt more pathetic and clingy in your life. He's been asleep for one month and you're fraying apart at the seams. The amount of times you check to see if he's stirring per day is shameful. 

You hate that this is Rose's first impression of you in eight years. 


	13. Codependency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the cool thing about being an author is sometimes you write shit that just does not have a fucking point. anyway, rose likes to tell dave things about himself he doesnt want to think about, feat. his feelings around karkat

Fault in Our Stars cover style, you and Rose lay on the ground in opposite directions, your heads placed close together. You fiddle with your camera, fucking around with the settings, and somewhere out of your field of vision, Rose’s knitting needles click. It’s probably too cold for the two of you to be lying around outside on the ground. The chill seeps into your bones, through your shirt, but you’re too stubborn to move.

You feel… awkward. It’s awkward as hell, spending time with Rose now. A lot’s changed over the years and you both can feel it. On top of that, the subject of your parents always seems to hang heavy in the air. For now, Rose seems content to let you ignore it and pretend they don’t exist- probably because she wants to keep you all to herself- but you know that one day, she’ll bring it up again, and you won’t be able to get out of seeing them. 

But, also, you’re pretty content. It’s nice to spend time with her, however awkward it may feel sometimes. Honestly, you missed her so much, and having her back… it’s everything you could ever ask it to be. You’re both trying to make this work, and you think, one day, this will feel normal again. It feels like some hole in your heart was patched up with her return, and you believe that, eventually, it’ll all heal over. Even now, you can breathe easier. 

You lay in as comfortable silence as the two of you really get, fiddling with your respective things and thinking. You have to admit, it beats lying out here on your own. Rose's presence is reassuring, in a way. You feel a little better just having her here. You're finally starting to get to the point where you can hang out without the pressure of trying to catch up, so there's no need to talk. You can just relax.

Rose breaks the silence anyway, though. "I can hear you worrying from here."

"What?" You don't hear her, at first, distracted with your camera. However, right as she starts to repeat herself, it processes, and you accidentally cut her off. "Oh."

"What's the cause for concern today?" She has that Nosy Voice. It's the one she always gets when she's about to ram her nose forcibly up your business and pry your trauma out of your ass. 

You realize you've been flicking back and forth between two pictures, too fast to view either of them. You force yourself to stop, realizing that must have been what tipped her off. Immediately, you feel antsy, but you resist the urge to start fidgeting again. You figure it's a bust, but you try playing dumb anyway. "What?"

"Karkat's still not up," she guesses, "and you're worried he won't ever wake up."

You point an accusing finger at her, which is hard when you're both lying down like this, but you try. "Okay, don't pretend like that's some genius conclusion you just came to. You know he's still asleep. He'd be here if he wasn't."

“But?” she prompts.

You sigh, returning your gaze to your camera screen. Displayed currently is a picture of the Governor, your beloved cat, lying on his back in the sun, double tails flicking lazily. He has his tongue poking out of his mouth, so he looks like an idiot. 

“He  _ will _ wake up,” Rose reassures you.

“You don’t know that. This is the bubbles. Sometimes things get… stuck. Plus, what about his mutation? What if that fucks something up? What if he wasn’t meant for this, or what if it takes a whole year?”

“He wouldn’t pupate if he wasn’t supposed to. That’s not how bodies work. You should know that better than anyone.” Her voice is so obnoxiously calm and even, like she’s trying to soothe you. “If it takes him a longer time, then it takes him a longer time. He’ll wake up again eventually. You haven’t lost him.”

“I can’t-” You stop yourself. “You don’t know any of that for sure. Neither of us know anything about this.”

“Kanaya does, though. And as I’m to understand, she’s already assured you multiple times that it’ll go fine.”

You remember, then, that Rose still hasn’t met Kanaya. You’re both putting things off, here. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t made you meet your parents yet.

Her hand brushes your hair, petting lightly along your scalp a few times. “You’re tearing yourself apart over something you can’t help. Everything that can be done has been done. You can’t spend every waking second between when he falls asleep and when he wakes up again sitting by his side and worrying yourself sick.”

You want to whine like a child, and protest that you  _ can _ , and you want to. You know she’s right, but you just can’t stop. She makes it sound so easy, like you can just, decide to stop worrying, but that’s not how it works. Does she just expect you to passively accept the disappearance of your best friend from your life?

Except, he hasn’t disappeared, and in some ways that makes it worse. You know exactly where he is, and what he’s doing. Which, is a whole lot of fuckall. He’s just… stuck in that stasis, totally nonrespondent. He doesn’t even roll over or shift. He could be double dead, for all you know. It’s not like he has a real heartbeat, and it’s basically impossible for you to tell if he’s breathing right now. It terrifies you beyond words.

Instead of saying all of that, you just say, “I know.”

She strokes your hair back gently, sighing. “When Kris told me the two of you were living together, I knew you had to have gotten so much closer over the years. But, I think, even then, I may have underestimated it. You can’t stand that he’s not here, can you?”

Ouch. You wince slightly, though you try not to. It sounds so pathetic when she says it out loud like that. Not that you didn’t know it was totally pathetic, but she didn’t have to go and verbalize it like that.

She seems to take your silence as confirmation. “I can only assume it’s gotten to the point where any kind of separation makes you anxious. He’s become a kind of crutch for you, where you feel like you can’t walk without him. You’re codependent. Being away from this long must really be getting to you. I can only imagine how lost you feel."

You sit up. Something about hearing it out loud makes your eyes sting and your face heat. Her tone is understanding, but blood roars in your ears.

Her hand falls on your arm, and you can see her looking up at you out of the corner of your eye. "It's okay."

You pull your arm out of her grasp. "It's not."

"It will be." She sits up too, now, scooting back so she can see your face. "You're not going to lose him."

"Shut up." You huff out a breath, to try and dislodge the lump in your throat. You need her to shut up. If she keeps pushing it, you… You don't know what you'll do.

"He's going to wake up, Dave. Any day now, he'll be right back to screaming at you guys for the huge mess you made while he was gone. This isn't going to be like losing everyone else. You know where he is, and he  _ will _ wake up."

"I've got stuff to do." You get to your feet suddenly. You don't know why she keeps pushing this. You don't need to be having this conversation. 

She grabs your arm, getting to her feet as well. She's a whole foot shorter than you, so you have to look down at her. "You don't. You don't do anything at all, with him gone. You'll just end up going right back to his room and sitting in there and feeling bad."

"Yeah, and? That's my right as a fuckin adult. Look, I don't wanna talk about this." You pull your arm out of her hold again. "Jade's probably still in the area. You can hit her up."

She sighs, and she sounds almost disappointed. "Dave-"

You're already leaving, heading back inside to go do exactly what she accused you of.


	14. Patched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> karkat finishes his molt

When you come home, you notice immediately that something's up. For one thing, the puppets are all gone again. There are no sword hilts sticking out from cupboards. There are no muddy footprints in the halls. On top of all of that, you can hear the quiet burbling of the coffee machine in the kitchen. 

Usually, something like this would mean Jade's here. Jade always dreams away your childhood paraphernalia when she's here. But, she usually tracks in mud just as much as you do. Also, Jade drinks tea. Not coffee. There's a small chance it could be Rose, but Rose never just lets herself in unannounced. Maybe Kanaya? Unlikely, though.

Against your better judgement, you can feel yourself getting your hopes up. Forgetting all about what you were planning on doing, and even forgetting to close the door, you go from a walk, to a run, to fucking flashstepping, darting through the house to the kitchen. You try to tell yourself that it couldn’t be. There’s no way it actually is. It’s going to be someone else, and your feelings are going to be crushed, and you’re going to feel like shit for the rest of the day.

But it is. 

In your shock, you make a misstep, lose your balance, overshoot, and hit your hip on the counter sharply. Instinctively, you hiss in pain, leaning away from it and pressing your hand against the spot where it hurts. The sound, as well as your sudden appearance, startles him. The mug in his hands shatters from him gripping it too tight in his surprise. Karkat swears up a storm in Alternian, dreaming the cup fixed again. 

You should laugh, but all you can do is stare at him like an idiot. He’s…  _ so _ much bigger. Like, you knew that was how molts worked. You figured he would just grow a couple of inches, though. The idea of Karkat actually being tall had never even crossed your mind. You didn’t think that was like,  _ possible _ for him. You couldn’t think of Karkat without imagining him as your short, round, little roommate, shoving himself all the way into the corner of the couch, up against the arm, and balling up in blankets so he seems even smaller. However, now, he’s definitely tall. He might even be taller than you, and you’re really not sure how you feel about that.

He’s got more muscle, too. Where it had all been fat before, there’s a different distribution of it now- the kind you associate with someone who’s heavyset, but disturbingly jacked. It’s the kind you associate with John. He fucking decimated that cup, just by squeezing a little too hard, and part of you wants to see what else he can do. Part of you wants to be that cup, but you ignore that thought as soon as it comes, because,  _ what? _

Other than that, surprisingly little has changed. His horns have grown a little bigger, but not too much. His carapace seems darker to you. His voice is deeper; more rumble than click. In general, he looks a little older, a little more mature, but it’s definitely still your Karkat. 

And, he’s wearing your shirt, which. Well, on you, it would be baggy, but on him, it really doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination.

Still cursing under his breath, he sets the mug on the counter. He eyes you, and switches to English. “Stop staring at me like I just killed your human mother. I know! I look like someone decided to just hit the expand button for no goddamn reason. I sound like a drain gunk gargler. It’s fucking disgusting. But we’re both just going to have to learn to get fucking used to it.” He pauses, and awkwardly tugs at  _ your _ shirt, adjusting it like he’s trying to find a way to wear it that doesn’t totally hug everything. “Your shit was the only thing that fit, okay?”

Somehow- and you don’t know how- you find your voice. "Right. Because those novelty Thresh Prince boxers are totally mine, and you didn’t dream them up at all.” 

"Wow! Would you look at that? It's time for you to shut up. Unbelievable. You've only been here for like, a minute. Time truly does fly, and will fly across this block, unless you shut the fuck up. Time being you, in case that one didn’t register in your tiny, boiled-over pan.” His face has totally gone red. Gottem.

“It’s a good look,” you tease.

“I will yank your underwear up over your head.”

“Hot.”

For a second, he looks like he might just explode. The sight is so familiar, it somehow makes you feel like everything’s right in the world again. The ball of anxious tension in your gut loosens.

He drags his hands down his face, taking a slow, deep breath. You watch him reign himself back in, with a great deal of effort on his part. “Okay. How long was I out?”

“One month, two weeks, and three days,” you rattle off, instantly. You never have to think about it. Keeping time comes easy to you.

His eyes bug. He splutters, “What?!”

“Yeah. Is that like, normal? Because dude, you were in there for like, ever. There were like, bits of carapace floating around in the goop, and it got kind of really nasty, and I wasn’t sure if I should like, clean it? Because Kanaya said it was fine, but it looked really gross? Like, I would not wanna sleep in there.”

He cuts off your babbling with a, “Yeah, I know. I was in there. I woke up in there.” He puts a hand to his forehead, leaning back against the counter. “Holy shit. I can’t believe it was two months. No wonder I’m so fucking massive, what the fuck. Maybe it was a mistake? Like, maybe I was asleep for too long. I don’t think it works like that, though. Fuck, whoever the fuck was responsible for making me really did decide to be like, hey, you know what? Fuck this guy in particular! Let’s just make him, genetically, biologically, really, really fucked up. Just for fun! Like, let’s put off his molt for  _ years _ . That’ll be so great. Oh! And then! When he finally does molt, we can make it take forever! Human months, even! And be super painful!”

“Painful?” you cut in, eyebrows furrowing.

He waves you off. You don’t appreciate that, because you’re worried, but he’s not done talking. “It’s like, soreness. It’s fine. But still! Augh, this is so stupid. Stupidest molt ever. Stupid fucking, mutation. Late bloomer my ass, it’s just fucked up.”

“Yeah,” you agree, lamely. It doesn’t feel like enough of a response, but you’re thinking of the two months you spent agonizing over whether or not he would wake up at all. You don’t want to tell him about that. He doesn’t need to know how freaked out you were.

“Now I have to clean so much shit up. There’s white dog hair everywhere! And Dave, the food, holy shit. You guys made  _ such _ a mess-”

Ah, there it is. As he starts ranting about the mess he’s found since waking up, you find yourself trying not to grin. He’s bigger, but it’s absolutely your same Karkat, freaking out over spilled fucking milk. You missed him so fucking much. 

He goes on and on about it for a while, waving his hands empathetically. You don’t even interrupt him. You just sit back and watch him go. He pours his coffee like that, grumping and bitching about the cleaning he’ll have to do, and the new clothes he’ll have to dream up, and how he’ll have to expand his recooperacoon, so he’ll fit in it better. (He’s already expanded it once, so he actually fits in it just fine. You know he’s only expanding it again for the same reason he did the first time: so both of you can fit.)

When he leans back against the counter again, coffee in hand, he finally catches sight of your face. “What?” he demands.

“Nothing.”   
  


“No; what? What’s that look for?” He’s gotten defensive, now, squinting at you.

You struggle harder against your grin, because you know you have to look and sound like the world’s biggest idiot when you say, “Nothing. I just missed you.”

The moment of vulnerability is totally worth how taken aback he is, face going red all over again. His mouth opens and closes, but he doesn’t seem to have anything at all to say to that. Finally, he says, “Fuck you,” and holds out a hand, gesturing clearly for you to come over there. “I'm out of commission for two fucking months, and you trash my hive, wreck my shit, fill my respite block with your junk, spam me with literally thousands of messages-  _ thousands _ , Dave- and all you have to say for yourself is ‘I missed you?’ You’re a fucking piece of shit.”

You’d been hovering on the other side of the kitchen, wanting to approach, but unsure how to make your feet move. At his gesture, you finally let yourself. By the time he reaches the end of his tirade, you’re trying not to laugh as he hooks his free arm around you, pulling you into him and squeezing you tight. You wrap your arms around him and press your face into his chest, grinning like a dipshit against his- your- shirt. He kisses the top of your head and your fingers curl tightly into the back of his shirt. 

“I should’ve saved all that gross dead carapace soup and dumped it on your sleeping platform,” he grumbles against your hair, squeezing you again. 

“Too late now,” you say, your voice muffled. He can probably still hear the smile.

For the first time in almost two months, you feel like you can relax. He’s shaped different and hugging him isn’t the same as it was, but it’s still him. He’s warm, with enough squish that he’s nice and comfortable. He doesn’t have the soft sweater, but that’s fine. You feel like you could spend the rest of the day standing here and leeching affection from your favorite person in the multiverse. Even though it's been almost two months and he's changed a lot, he still feels like home to you. 

For a while, he just stands there with you, rubbing his hand thoughtlessly along your spine while he sips his coffee. It's perfectly fine by you. You're totally content to lean against him, shut your eyes, and just soak up the feeling as much as you can. As a matter of fact, you don't think you've been so happy to do something once since Karkat started his molt. 

While he drains his coffee, you have time to sort of process everything. Karkat is definitely taller than you, as it turns out, by a fair few inches. He's also definitely way buffer, which is so weird, and so unfair, because he hasn't done shit but sleep for two months.

All of that, though, is secondary to the intense feeling of relief and joy surging through your veins at having him awake again. It's so much, you almost feel like crying. It feels like a huge piece of you was missing, but now returned, and now you can finally go back to living your life normally. Just his fucking presence- his embrace, is so insanely reassuring and safe. It's nothing like when you found Rose again, and you knew that one day everything would be back to normal. This is immediate, present relief from all your worries at once. The switch back to normal happens before you even notice. 

You don't have to worry about being too clingy or being too much. When he finishes his coffee, he sets it down so he can wrap both arms around you, pressing his face into your hair. Any concerns you had about needing to pull away are immediately smoothed over, reassured that he still wants you close. He's so much bigger than you now, it feels like you're totally enveloped in his embrace. Maybe that should feel suffocating, but you've never felt so safe.

"You're so fucking tiny," he mumbles into your hair, and you snort.

"Dude, I'm just lucky you're not as big as Kanaya." Karkat's big, but compared to Kanaya, he's nothing at all. She totally dwarfs all of you.

He groans. "Just my fucking luck. Even after my adult molt, I'm  _ still _ short."

"We should get you measured. I don't think you're even that much taller than me. Like, a few inches, maybe. Probably around six five, six six? Dude, you could be six six point six." You lift your head to grin at him, and find your face just inches away from his.

If his eyes weren't solid white, you know that the irises would be red by now. You kind of wish you'd gotten the chance to see that. 

His cheeks darken a little, and you think he rolls his eyes, scoffing at you. Then he presses his forehead against yours, saying, "Just for that, I'm not getting measured! You'll just never know how tall I am. My ambiguous giaganticism will haunt you forever."

"Fine by me, long as you haunt me forever too." Your tone is joking, but there's too much fondness mixed in. 

If Karkat's face wasn't red before, it definitely is now. Whenever you fluster him, he always gets this scrunched up, frustrated look on his face, like he's about to start breathing fire from how pissed he is. There's always this split second where he splutters and fumbles for words scathing enough to cover up how embarrassed he is. You love it. 

"Holy. Shit. That is so fucking- You think you're so fucking clever, hurling your shitty ass ghost puns at me. We get it! We're all some abstract version of dead and some concept of 'ghost' now supposedly applies to us! Please, continue to make ridicule of our absurd and unreasonable situation. Do I look transparent to you, Dave? Do I perhaps speak in tongues understandable only by those who have the psychic ability to communicate with trolls on my plane of existence? Do I, even, look like a fucking sheet with holes in it? We're barely ghosts! All we've got going for us are these stupid fucking sight globes." 

"You're just mad because I enjoy your company and have the balls to verbalize it in front of you and you don't know how to deal with being blatantly loved." 

"Shut the fuck up." He jabs his fingers into your sides, tickling, and you jump, butting your head into his chest and slapping at his hands.

"Hey!" you protest, finally managing to grab his hands. You interlace your fingers, so he can't attack you again. Unfortunately, this also means you can't hug him, which is kind of disappointing. "Asshole." 

"Pot, kettle." He snorts at you, and the corner of his mouth twists up in that stupid, crooked smile you love so much, sharp teeth poking out over his bottom lip. An insane part of you wants to feel those teeth and see just how sharp they really are. You can be so stupid sometimes. 

You stretch up on your toes to knock your forehead into his, since your hands are otherwise occupied. It earns another snort from Karkat. He leans down again to bump his forehead against yours, and you can hear some soft chirp coming from him that you know is more affectionate than he'll openly admit to. 

You feel like an idiot, smiling as much as you are, but you can't help it. You just missed this  _ so much _ . You don't think you could even begin to tell him how you felt before. You’re not sure if you should. Rose’s words still burn somewhere inside of you, harsh and scathing.  _ Codependent _ , she’d said, like it was some kind of terminal illness. 

After a second, he pulls his hand away from yours, instead lifting it up to smooth it over your fuzzy, newly buzzed head. You can see him eyeing it. It’s unusual for you to have your hair natural and you’ve definitely never buzzed it like this, so you’re not surprised when he says, “What the fuck did you even do while I was out? I swear, you have no adult supervision for like, two months, and you go and do some hoofbeastshit like this.”

“What, you don’t like it?” you tease him, tilting your head into the touch.

He definitely seems like he likes it. He won’t stop rubbing your head, fascinated by the feel. Not that you can blame him. It does feel pretty funky. “It looks fucking weird. And it’s brown. You didn’t bleach it,” he observes.

“Yeah. I’m trying something new. I mean, Rose’s hair is like, totally natural now, so like-”

“Rose?” He gives you a weird look.

“Oh. Right. God, dude, you missed a lot of shit. Like, so much, actually. Important shit. Real shit. Not like, ‘I found a cool leaf’ shit. Like, real shit,” you tell him, seriously.

His weird look only intensifies. But, he starts to straighten up, letting go of your hand, and giving what little hair you have a final ruffle, so you sadly take that as your queue to back off a little. “Okay, well, how about this? I need to eat, like, a shitton of grub, right now, or I’m going to fall over fucking deader than I already am. I burned so many calories in there, you have no idea. Growing is the most exhausting process in the fucking world. So, I’m going to do that, and you can build us a giant ass fort. And then, we can jam all day and you can fill me in. Sound good? I’d tell you to fill me in while I eat but then I’ll just end up talking instead of eating and I  _ really _ need to eat right now.” He shrugs a shoulder. 

You nod, though. You don’t really want to be separated from Karkat, even for that, but the promise of spending the rest of the day together is a pretty good one. You can settle for that. One long day of catching up with Karkat, relaxing, and making up for a whole lot of lost time. That works for you. So, you say, “Yeah, sure.”

“Cool. Get to it, then. I’ll come find you in a second, if you don’t beat me to it. And no time powers! That’s cheating,” he adds, quickly.

You snort at him. You have to reach up to ruffle his hair, which is so weird. You do it, though. “Yeah, yeah. Later, loser.” Before he can get in another word edgewise, or try to tickle you again, you flashstep out.


	15. green eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for a prompt on tumblr: send me (emoji) for a glimpse at my muses past
> 
> tw in this one for sm implied child abuse bc we love that

**** Your name is Dave Strider, and you're pretty sure you're nine years old. Truth be told, you don't even know, because Bro never really told you. But, you know that you would be starting fourth grade this year, if you still went to school, and most kids starting fourth grade are nine. So, therefor, you must be nine.

You don't tell people that, though. You've learned that people want certain answers, and if you give different ones, they'll treat you differently. When the mom at the park eyes your sword and asks you how old you are, you say you're seven and tell her your mom is in the bathroom. When the cashier squints at you and asks you how old you are, you say you're thirteen and your big sister was too lazy to get out of the car and come in with you. 

But when the kid at the beach with sand in his hair and eyes the same green as the water asks you how old you are, you tell him you're nine. His whole face lights up and he tells you he's nine too. He asks you what school you go to- you say somewhere in the city over. To your shock, he says he goes to the same one and gives you a grin brighter than the sun that's threatening to turn your skin red. He promises he'll keep an eye out for you and you feel like a piece of shit. 

Honestly, you never came here with any sort of plan. You just hopped on the bus and took it as far as you could, and then you got on the next one and took that one as far as it would go. It took you hours and hours, but if you went far enough, you knew you’d hit water. The hazy heat of the city would be miles and miles away, the blood would boil on the pavement, and you would only be subject to cool, salty air, and the sound of beachgoers laughing and shouting.

When the kid asks you if you’d like to help him build what he calls a “hot tub” in the sand, you don’t have any reason to tell him no. He has some pretty cool sand toys that look new to you, and they help you dig your pit bigger and bigger. In no time, you’re covered in just as much sand as he is. 

You spend the whole day with him, digging your hot tub until the tide comes in and ruins it. When your pants are soaked up to your knees, trying and failing to save it, you give up and go swimming. He doesn't ask why you don't have a swimsuit, or why you only take your shoes and socks off- he thinks it's cool. You find out he's a stronger swimmer than you, even though he's smaller, and when the waves knock you off your feet, you both go down in his attempt to save you. 

You come up laughing, and agree it's probably time to take a break and eat. He brings you back to where his grandparents are sitting on towels spread out over the sand without even asking you if you have your own food. Neither of his grandparents seem to speak any English, but that doesn’t stop his grandma from piling your plate with more food than you know what to do with. She tuts at you in a language you don’t understand and your friend laughs when she pinches your arm, and then your cheek. You get the general message: you’re too thin and you need to eat more. Lucky for her, you’re not really one to say no.

You eat until you’re too full to move and then find a place to lie on your backs in the sand and talk about comic books. You learn he’s super into superheroes. His favorite is Batman. You never got into superheroes and he thinks that’s a federal crime. He gets excited when you tell him you have your own comic, though. He flips over onto his stomach to look at you, head hanging over your own, so when you stare up at him his head is haloed in warm sunlight. He makes you tell him the name of your comic and promises you he'll look it up when he gets home. You’re a little scared he actually will.

He asks you about your sword; asks you to show him some moves. You demonstrate. Then he wants to try. Before long, the sword is dropped in the sand, and he's trying to tackle you into the ground. You’re way too fast for him, though, and dodge him so quickly he never even touches you. He calls it unfair, but when you tackle him, he's laughing so hard his shoulders shake. He wants you to promise you'll show him how to fight like that, and you don't want to tell him no, so you say you don't think his grandparents would like that very much. When he pouts, you tell him his face looks dumb.

When you roll off, he rolls over with you, sitting on top of your stomach and declaring himself the winner. He hasn’t even pinned you. Your arms are still free. But he seems so pleased with himself, you only scoff at him and grump, not wanting to totally ruin his good mood with your superior knowledge of fighting. 

You start to change your mind when he starts pouring handfuls of sand on your head.

Eventually, his grandparents call him home. He promises he'll find you at school on Monday. You'd almost forgotten about that. You lie and tell him you'll keep an eye out for him.

You sit on the beach until it gets dark. When you get on the bus back home, the bus driver glances at your sunburned face and sandy clothes, sighs, and takes your money. You hope Bro feels the same way. Training hurts more when you're sunburned.


	16. jumpy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for a tumblr prompt: send (emoji) to get a glimpse into my muses future
> 
> ah, the tricky task of predicting the future whilst simultaneously keeping it vague enuff that i can still play arnd w it and fuck shit up

Karkat is fucking crushing you. He’s so much bigger than you, so you have virtually no chance of ever getting free. You just have to sit there, and accept your fate, trapped under this giant fucking bug all sprawled out on you.

You sigh, eyes fixed on the ceiling above you as your hand rubs idly up and down the bumps of Karkat’s spine under his shirt. You’re so fucking fascinated by his body, you feel like he has to be sick of you tracing his ridges and intersections by now. You don’t think you could ever be sick of it, but sometimes you wonder when he’s finally going to swat your hands off of him and tell you he’s had enough.

Something in the other room crashes and both of you startle. Karkat jerks his head up, eyes wild, grabbing your shirt tight. You freeze, locking up all of your muscles and going as still as possible. You look at each other, and slowly, in tandem, you start to move.

Karkat’s hand rubs your side soothingly as you both get to your feet, but you don’t know if it’s more for his sake or yours. Regardless, in a few moments, both of you have your hands full with your weapons, and start to approach the kitchen. 

In the kitchen, the Governor crouches on the counter, staring down at a fallen pan. Karkat sighs heavily, and while he picks up the pan, you pick up your cat, cradling the little asshole in your arms. “Little shit,” Karkat grumbles, switching on the sink to wash the dish clean all over again. 

“He’s trying his best,” you defend, hiking the Governor up in your arms so you can kiss his little, pink nose. He rewards you by hitting you in the face with his paw, twisting around, and jumping down from your arms. He goes stalking off with his tails in the air and you pout after him.

A kiss lands on your cheek. Automatically, you look over at Karkat, just as he grabs your hips and starts to pull you in with wet hands. “I’m not a towel, dude,” you say, but you still gravitate in toward him, looping your arms around his neck and stretching up to kiss his chin.

For that, he deliberately, actively wipes his hands on you, drying them off on your clothes. “Huh! I didn’t notice. Oh well. Too late now.” 

“Wow. You asshole.” Your tone lacks any kind of real anger at all. How could it have any, when Karkat is pulling you in closer and kissing along your cheek like that? It’s taking everything in you just not to smile like a dipshit. 

His mouth is otherwise preoccupied, so instead of words, you just get these disgustingly affectionate chirrs in reply. They’re quiet and low, but you still hear and feel them, rumbling away in Karkat’s chest. Karkat still won’t tell you what they mean, but you’ve known him long enough and know enough Alternian to have a pretty good idea. Plus, the looks Kanaya gives him whenever she catches him doing it and the shades of red his face turn as a consequence are pretty telling.

You love those little things about him. You love the clicks and chirps, and the way his skin is tough to the touch. You love the way his carapace connects together, and the ridges that line his arms and legs and snag on your clothes when he pulls back too fast. You love the way his eyes glow dimly in the dark and the way his jaw works. You love that he’s so fucking strong and sharp and dangerous and yet you know with more certainty than you’ve ever had about anything that he’s the safest person you’ll ever know. His teeth are against your neck, deadly sharp, but you trust him completely, tipping your head to bare more skin to him.

It feels, suddenly, like your hair is standing on end. The air crackles like static in your ears for a second. Then, there’s a flash of green light, and a, “Hi!”

You and Karkat jump apart so fast Karkat knocks into the counter and nearly slips and falls. You swear and grab his arm to keep him from hitting the dirt, and he grabs the counter to steady himself, getting back to his feet. The two of you are damn jumpy today, but he doesn’t try to hold you again, and you don’t try to get back in his space. 

While Karkat starts picking a fight with Jade about her teleporting in without warning, Rose fixes you with a look that has you trying your hardest to keep your face from going bright red.


	17. within closing distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a tumblr prompt that got away from me. prompt: send (emoji) to glimpse my muses past.
> 
> for context: this is set around a year or two after they died. for additional notes on what that timeline looks like, check out the notes at the end.

The bed feels cold and empty when you wake up, even though there was never anyone else in it. With your arm draped over your eyes to keep out the sun, your imagination fills in what’s not there. A boy with blue eyes and a teasing smile lies next to you, propped up on one elbow to look at you like he’s thinking about how to annoy you out of bed. Then it’s the Sollux you spent the whole day with a week ago, sitting in the back of a closet so close that your shoulders pressed together and talking quietly about things that can’t be shared in the light. Then the Eridan who surprised you by kissing you hard enough to draw blood, right after swearing up and down that you were too infuriating for him to ever even think about you like  _ that _ . A different John. A Karkat. Another Karkat.  _ Your _ Karkat, with his face shoved into your shoulder and his arm around your waist, curled up close to you like you could become one person. 

You force yourself to get up.

You don’t shower. You haven’t in days. You’re not hungry, but you trudge downstairs to find something to eat anyways. Karkat’s curled up on the couch with a book and a mug that’s no longer hot, and you think about how nice it would be just to collapse on the couch with him and stick your head in his lap so he has to pet your hair and pay attention to you. You don’t do that, though. You pretend you hadn’t even thought of it, and start pouring yourself some cereal.

Karkat only notices you when you’re about done, but it takes you until he’s gotten halfway through his sentence before you register him actually speaking, so you think you’re even.

“...-awake. You missed Jade. She said something about going out for a while, and that if we needed her, we could call her. I don’t think she’s going to be back for a while.”

Your stomach twists. You kind of regret eating anything. You remember the horrible conversation you had with Jade yesterday, and you get the feeling it might be your fault she’s gone. You didn’t think she’d gotten what you were saying at the time, but maybe she had. You probably shouldn’t have said it either way.

You just couldn’t  _ stand _ the way she kept pushing you, trying to make you into something you weren’t. She wanted you to be Davesprite. She wanted more than friendship, more than you, more than anything you could manage to give her, and no matter how many times you tried to tell her no, it was never clear enough for her. The constant passes at you were starting to really freak you out. You felt so guilty feeling almost relieved when Karkat said she probably wouldn't be back for a while.

But you still shouldn’t have been so harsh. You make yourself swallow, and reply, “Damn.”

Karkat gives you a kind of weird look and you wonder if she told him. But you know she’s been giving him grief too.

She’s lonely and you understand that, but you just can’t give her what she wants. Lately, you can’t even manage to be around her. The guilt is eating you up inside, but you’re at the end of your rope with it, and you don’t know what you’ll do when you run out completely.

Your plan is to get in and out of the kitchen with minimal conversation, but right when you’re about to head out, Karkat stops you. 

“Hey.” He’s on his feet, closing his book and stuffing it into his sylladex while he walks over to you. He’s got that concerned look on his face, the one that means it’s Serious Caring Friend time. You feel like flinching away from it because it feels like too much sometimes, being so cared about, but you stand still anyway when his hand touches your arm, way too gently. He has to tilt his head back to look up at you, and his eyebrows are all scrunched together in worry. “I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay, because you’re going to serve me up some fine ass bullshit that you’ll no doubt make up on the fly about how the economy is plummeting and you’re stressed out because you can’t balance your budget and you’re running out of money to buy more human Obama standees-”

“Are you implying there’s a troll Obama?” 

“Shut up! You’re not doing this. I am avoiding all of that bullshit, right now. It’s not happening. Instead, we’re going to do something else. You, and me, are going to build a fort. Right now. We are going to build a fucking fort, and we are going to sit in that shit, and you are going to watch every cinematic masterpiece I put on until you feel like talking about what the fuck is up. And maybe you won’t! And that’s fine. But we’re doing it. Right here, right now. Cancel all your other fucking plans, because you’re sure as hell not getting out of this one.”

You hate that it almost makes you want to smile, how he bosses you around and just demands you go along with his bullshit like that. But, he probably has a right to. After all, you go along with his bullshit, just like that. “As you wish, Buttercup.”

He punches you in the arm, but it’s way too fucking gentle. It always is. Then he grabs your hand and drags you off to his room.

You spend some time constructing your fort, setting it up for maximum comfort. You drag in one of your mattresses for it, so you have something soft to lie on, and you and Karkat pool your blankets and pillows, so you have one, whole, little tent set up in Karkat’s room, built for maximum comfort and softness. Karkat’s laptop is set on a box at one end of the makeshift bed, and you and Karkat are stretched out on the other end. You've got snacks in a bag stuffed in one corner, for when you inevitably get hungry. The only lightsource in the whole tent is Karkat's laptop, and while you both fuss over whether you should grab a flashlight, neither of you do.

You end up spending the whole day in there. It turns into a whole ass marathon, watching the human versions of movies, and then the troll ones, even though you have no idea what any of the trolls are saying. Karkat keeps a running commentary so you can kind of understand what's going on, but honestly, you're not particularly interested in the movies anyways, especially as it starts to get late.

Three in the morning finds the two of you tangled fully together. Karkat's attempt at still being able to see the movie has gotten steadily weaker as you've gotten more in the way, weighing him down, so he's got just enough pillows propped up behind him that he can still see the screen over your head. You, on the other hand, are fully sprawled out, draped over him with your cheek smushed against his chest. It’s one of those positions that shouldn’t be comfortable, but somehow is. Karkat’s hand runs idly through your hair while you fight against drowsiness, trying to focus on his running commentary.

You haven’t talked about what’s bothering you, but the knowledge that Karkat wants you to hangs over your head. You go back and forth on it constantly. On the one hand, you want to tell him. You tell him everything, and so far you've yet to find a situation where his caring reassurance didn't make you feel at least a little better. But, you honestly don’t even know what you  _ would _ tell him. How do you explain the aching loneliness inside you, or the way you try to fill it with anyone and everyone in your head? How do you explain to him that you’re so pathetic and desperate, you keep turning to boys-  _ boys _ , and entertaining thoughts of them? How do you explain that being around him makes you feel sick, because you can’t stop thinking about him in ways you never wanted to think about him? It’s disgusting. It’s pathetic. And if you shared that, what then? What would he say? How would he take it?

You're probably overthinking it, though. It's Karkat. How bad could it possibly go?

You keep glancing up at him, thinking about what you would say, if you did say it. You're also trying not to think about what it’d feel like if you kissed him, and failing. 

Finally, Karkat asks, "What?" and you realize you haven't been as subtle as you thought.

“Do you ever get so lonely you think about people you’d literally never be interested in?” You say it before you can think too long about it, so you can just get it out there, into the air.

He blinks at you. “What?"

"You know, like." You gesture vaguely and unhelpfully with one hand. "Do you ever think about like, kissing someone or whatever, but it's someone who you know you like, don't wanna do that with?"

"Because you can't, or because they're gross?"

Hm. You don't like thinking about that, so you say instead, "Because you're just not interested."

He thinks on that. His fingers still run idly through your hair, so you wait patiently, trying not to freak out about the stretching silence. "I mean, kind of? Sort of? Sometimes? I dunno. Like, weird, what-if scenarios or something."

"Right." So maybe it's normal. Maybe it's not that bad, and everyone just kind of has a moment sometimes where they think of people they shouldn't like like that.

"Why?" He pauses, and then asks, "Is this about your human gay thing again?"

“I mean, partially? Yeah. But also, like…” 

"Dave, it doesn't fucking matter. The Earth is gone! You're all dead and surrounded by "human gay aliens." Who fucking cares?" He makes quotation marks with his hands, and then throws them up in the air in exasperation. "No one's even keeping track! So what if a guy is hot? You should be more concerned about the fact that all guys are idiots and that you're deluded for liking them than whether or not a dead culture gives a shit if you like them."

You turn your face into his chest, snorting. "I guess."

He sighs, pushing your hair back and generally making a mess of it. "You put too much stock in the opinions of a bunch of dead people."

"Oh, look who's talking."

"Shut up! This about you right now, not me."

"Yeah, yeah. Dead guy." 

He slaps you upside the head, but gently, and you snort again. 

You really want to kiss him. Maybe just to try it. Just to see what it feels like. 

You set your chin on his chest so you can look at him and he brushes your hair back out of your face. Your faces are only a few inches apart at this distance, and if you wanted, you could push up a little more and close the space between you. You don't, though. 

You must've been staring, because he asks, "You okay?" His face is so soft and concerned, it makes your chest feel tight.

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"You gonna share?"

"Maybe when you're older," you tease.

His cheeks go a little pink and he flicks you in the forehead. "Shut up."

You snort, and scoot up, but just enough to set your head on his shoulder and settle in again. You fit better in his arms this way, even though it does feel kind of weird on your back. He kisses your hair for your trouble, though, so that makes it all worth it.

It turns out you don't actually need to say anything about how weird it feels bending your back this way, because pretty soon, he's moving around all on his own. He yanks some pillows out from behind him so you're both more level. Now that the strain is gone, you can fully appreciate just how bad that position actually was. You shift around to get more comfortable with a soft grunt, and his arms tighten around you, pulling you in closer. You don't think he can see the movie anymore this way, but you guess that doesn't matter to him.

When the current movie ends, neither of you bother to turn it off, or put on a new one. Instead you just stay put. When you do move, it's because Karkat rolls over to face you, dragging a blanket over you both. You slip off your shades and drop them out of the way, before slipping your arm around his neck in turn and pressing your foreheads together. The silent consensus seems to be that you're spending the night here, instead of going back to your respective beds. 

Karkat's hand drags slowly over your spine with a lazy affection that makes you drowsy. It takes some effort to keep your eyes open, now, but you do, taking in Karkat's face while you run your hand through his strange, wiry hair. His eyes are closed, so he doesn't notice the way you study him, trying to memorize a face you already have memorized. You count the smattering of dots across his nose, so small and light most people would never know they're there.

When he yawns, it's big enough that his mouth stretches open inhumanly wide, chin splitting while the webbed skin at the corners of his mouth pull taut, suddenly visible. Like this, you can see his hidden maxillae and every deathly sharp tooth in his maw. But, more importantly, you can smell how bad his breath is. 

You make a face. "Ugh, dude."

He opens his eyes with a sleepy, “Hm?” His expression shifts to apologetic. "Sorry."

You sigh at him and he has the decency to look embarrassed. He shifts and nudges his nose against your cheek, to try and appease you with affection, and you forgive him in an instant. Your eyes slip shut automatically, relaxing as he presses a little kiss against your cheek.

When you open your eyes again, he's so, so close, and to your surprise, he's still looking at you. Like  _ you're _ the one that's worth thinking about. Like he thinks about you as much as you think about him. You can feel your cheeks heating up a little, but you can't move away from this. Instead, you touch his cheek, ever so lightly, and Karkat presses against your fingers until you cup his face properly. 

The moment seems to freeze there and stretch on, until finally, you lean in, closing the distance between you. You don't know what you're thinking. You don't know why he doesn't pull back. Your chest feels so tight during the few seconds where he doesn't move, you think your heart just might burst. Then he pulls you in closer, arm braced against your back, and all the tension flows out of you with a soft sigh. He's so tentative and gentle, and every kiss stays soft and slow enough to make your brain feel like mush. 

You think you stay up another hour kissing him. You can't even remember. It's all hazy, shrouded in drowsiness and comfort. You have vague memories of his hands on your skin and your lips on his neck. When you wake up, you're still totally trapped in his embrace. 

Neither of you talk about it. Sometimes you're not even sure if it actually happened. 

But sometimes, Karkat's hands linger a little too long, or he can't look at you when you kiss his cheek. You can't explain it, but it starts to freak you out. 

In a month, Jade's still not back, and you move out. You say you probably should have way earlier, because it's kind of dumb to keep hanging around when you don't need to. You're an adult. You're not as bad as you were last year. You don't need Karkat to drag you out of bed anymore. It just seems like it's time.

You're worried he blames himself the same way you blame yourself for Jade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its been mentioned previously on daves blog that hes lived with karkat for "[eleven] years, excepting a brief period of confusion." its also been sort of mentioned that the first year after they died, they all pretty much immediately moved in together as a way to cope with the overwhelming feeling of loss and loneliness. jade eventually turned to travel as a way to deal with it, sometimes disappearing for months at a time, while dave and karkat took turns pulling their shit together in order to help each other.


	18. hauntings and housemates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> daves reflections on his feelings towards karkat, feat. crush confusion and breaking traditional platonic affection boundaries

Your name is Dave Strider and you can't stop thinking about your housemate.

Housemate, not roommate. The distinction is important, but you can't explain why. You just feel like it's important to emphasize that you don't share a room. 

You don't share a room. But, god, you might as well. You spend enough time in Karkat's room for it. Your shit is everywhere in there. Even with Karkat's obsessive neat freak tendencies, it's never totally clean, because he can't really clean up your stuff. He tries, though. You basically have an entire drawer in his room devoted to your stuff. A solid half of the nights, you fall asleep in his room. There are two desk chairs because you're in there so often. Try as he might (which he doesn't) he'll never manage to fully scrub all traces of you out of there. Sometimes it feels like it’s as much your room as his and he’s just accepted it.

You have your own perfectly good room. You store your stuff in it, and you mix your music in there, and when you have people over that’s where you hang out. You don’t actually spend too much time in there, though. If you ever lose focus, everything in your room shifts and goes sideways until it’s an exact replica of the room you grew up in. It makes your skin crawl too much for you to stay in there for long.

You’ve done your best to try and keep that from happening. Your room as it is doesn’t usually look anything like the room you had in the apartment. It’s too alien for that. The walls are all Karkat’s hive, for one thing, all blocky and weird and dark the way hives are. Also, you’ve done your best to mimic the setup you had on the meteor instead. Your hope was that it’d remind you of then, instead of before then.

In the end, though, Bro always comes back to haunt you.

You find it easier to remember you’re not back in the apartment when you’re in Karkat’s room. It’s as far from your room as it gets, completely alien, and reminiscent of total safety and comfort instead of unending paranoia. 

Karkat says your room is barely a room. He says it's more like the closet in troll Poltergeist that leads to an alternate hellish dimension, hidden amongst childhood paraphernalia and creepy, forgotten dolls. It's constantly shifting and spitting out new horrors, when it's not playing nice for your guests. It's like it knows when it has to hide to keep how scared you are from the people you care about the most. He makes it sound like he thinks your room is alive, which creeps you out almost as much as the memories the room brings back. 

Karkat's room never really changes, aside from your stuff in it. Again, it looks more like his room on the meteor than his childhood home, according to him, but you know his childhood home still haunts him too. The difference is, for him there's not as much to change. His memories have other telltale signs. 

He doesn't talk about it much, but you know part of the reason why he allows you to make as big of a mess as you do is because it reminds him that he's not on Alternia. It's harder for him to convince himself he's still back there when there's your drawings on the walls and your clothes scattered everywhere in his room. 

Over the years, the two of you have more or less perfected the idea of sharing space in order to avoid flashbacks. In moving into his hive and marking it as your own with your presence, you've successfully created a home that's distinct from what either of you knew before. 

There was a time when you lived in your own apartment, and every day new horrors sprung up and the shadows moved, and you could never keep it under control. Not on your own. When you came back, Karkat's hive looked exactly the same as it had when you had first moved in, and from inside Karkat's room you could feel the house shake and shudder as mechanic rumbling grew louder and fainter. You didn't feel any less watched than you had in your own apartment. 

While Karkat was going through his molt, your room completely reverted into your childhood home. The dishwasher filled with swords, the laundry room disappeared, puppets piled in the sink, there was a camera in the vents, you found beer cans under the couch (which had somehow turned into a futon), and you tripped a new trap every day. Everywhere you went, you felt on edge, terrified in your own home. 

Jade started sticking around more, cleaning up your haunted mess every time she found it. She'd disappear for a day and it'd all appear all over again. She never said anything about it outright, but you knew in the way she looked at you that she was worried. You'd never talked to her about how bad it was before. You were terrified she was going to ask. The shame made it worse, and your memories just fell rapidly out of your control.

Then Rose and Khar were coming over all the time too. You tried your best to keep it hidden from both of them. If Rose saw anything, wisely, she never mentioned it. Khar just gave you these sort of concerned, sad looks that reminded you too much of Karkat and Jade at the same time. 

The only way you could combat all your old memories was by camping out in Karkat's room. For almost two months, you basically just lived in there. Sometimes something weird popped up, but usually if you buried your face in the pile and focused on his lingering smell, you managed to keep everything together. He wasn't there, but his memory was, and you felt safer in the presence of that than anywhere else. 

When Karkat woke up, he fixed everything; literally, and figuratively. The house went back to normal and you finally felt like you had some kind of control over it again. Seeing him again, you remembered clearly where you were and who you were. 

But you still camped in his room. Once he woke up, the two of you built a huge blanket fort in his room and talked about everything he'd missed. He didn't mention the state the hive had been when he woke up, but you knew he was thinking about it, because for the next couple of days, the fort stayed up. Every night, instead of going back to your room, you just passed out in the mound of pillows with Karkat. 

Some nights you didn't fall asleep easily. Some nights Karkat snored away next to you while you picked at the hem of the sweater you'd stolen from him and thought about what you'd do if he didn't wake up again. Over and over again, you heard Rose accuse you of being codependent in your head. 

Maybe she was right, but what could you do about that? So what if Karkat means everything to you? So what if he makes you feel better than anyone ever had, or would? All the problems in the world seem to melt when he looks at you, and the relief you felt when he woke up was so strong you almost cried. He's your best friend. Surely, it had to be normal to feel so strongly about him. 

But, well. Lately your feelings have complicated even further. 

You can't stop staring at him. At first, it might've just been because you weren't used to how he looked now. He's so much bigger, and somehow more alien than before. He's stronger, but he doesn't seem to understand how much stronger, and you watched him accidentally flip the entire couch trying to just lift it enough to get something out from under it. He keeps hitting his head on things, underestimating his own height, and he once threw a fit because he couldn't fit his hand in a jar.

The problem is, you're drowning in adoration. It's all so much more endearing than it should be, and it makes you stupid. A few days ago, he tried to sit down in a chair and it broke, and all you could think about is how much you wanted to kiss his stupid, bewildered face. 

You want to touch him constantly, in a way that you know goes way past relief or comfort. You want to feel the pronounced ridges of his carapace and trace along every chink. You want to put your hands on his chest and feel the way how his muscles shift and flex underneath. You want to feel his body pressed against yours and his arms around you, so all you feel is him. You want to run your fingers through his wiry hair and drag those alien noises out of his chest in any way you can. You want to trace your fingers over those faint, faint freckles that bridge across his cheeks, and press your lips against every old and faded scar he has. 

Karkat says that on Alternia, scars are something to be proud of. They prove that you're a fighter- not someone who just sits around. Scars are evidence that you went into a bad situation and you made it the fuck back out. They're the mark of a survivor. They're the mark of strength. 

When he touches your scars, you feel it. You don't know if he feels the same way, but you hope so.

Karkat just makes you feel so struck stupid, sometimes. Like, you'll be minding your own business, and then suddenly he does or says something, and you're just left bluescreening, floundering with this overwhelming feeling of… you don't even know, honestly. 

It's always small, stupid things. Like walking into his room and finding him stretched out in the pile on his phone, shirt riding up high enough that you can see the bottom edge of his grubscars. Or when he calls you an idiot in Spanish. Or, when you're in the recooperacoon, blearily texting over the edge, and you feel his fingers trace the deep scars on your back. Or when you walk into the kitchen in the morning and he hands you coffee, warm and made exactly the way you like it. Or when he tells you no one's ever been this important to him. 

You don't know what to do. You're not sure how to feel, or what to think, but you're terrified of what it might mean. 

You do your best to just not think about it at all. You waste your time flirting with Jake and Karter and you come home to Karkat's familiar embrace and you try to think that everything's fine. You spend most of your free time cuddled up to him and pretend you're not acutely aware of his hand stroking along your spine or his lips pressed against your head and argue with him about nothing at all. Everything's fine.

You wonder if it's normal to feel like he completes you. Is it okay if he's the safest thing you've ever known? Should you be worried if you don't think you could stand to live in a world without him? Is it safe to trust him with anything and everything? Are you wrong to feel like every day revolves around him, constantly looking to him, reaching for him, trying to get and keep his attention? Is it bad that he lets you?

Your eyes linger too long on his lips and you wonder if he'd ever let you kiss him again. 

You put it down to loneliness, to missing him, to wanting to feel like anyone at all would care about you after John, to being stupid, to zoning out too hard, to seeing too many gay posts on your dash, to being touch-starved. You come up with so many different reasons, and they seem less and less legit every day.

You're so fucking scared of the truth.

You think, though, that Karkat's also just not being very fair right now. He got back from showering minutes ago, but he's still standing there by his desk with a towel around his waist and another one in his hair, checking through some messages on his phone. You keep waiting for him to put the damn phone down and put on some clothes already, but he just keeps typing, his frown deepening more and more. No doubt, he's in some stupid argument with someone. He usually is. 

You don't know how he even stands it. It's so cold, you're fully bundled up with one of his too-big sweaters and the comforter from your room in your pile, but he looks totally comfortable in fuckall.

You know you shouldn't, but you study the way his chitinous armor fits together, and the knots that run up along his spine, and think about what it'd feel like to trace your fingers along it. Your eyes follow the thin, pink scars that cut into it, and linger on the two that killed him. His grubscars are the darkest, and most prominent, but his death scars are a close second. You have this absurd urge to hold him against you and kiss them. He's heavyset in the way where you know he's hiding so much strength, and a dumb part of you wants to touch and grope and squeeze just to feel the muscles tense and flex and shift. His towel hangs a little too low on his hips, and you have to force yourself not to stare. But you're being so stupid. It's not like any of this is something you've never seen before.

Karkat doesn't sleep with clothes on in his recooperacoon. The slime sticks to the fabric in uncomfortable ways, which you know from experience. But, as a result, you've seen a lot of troll ass during your fourteen years of living with him. He's seen plenty of your ass in return. That's just living together for you. 

Some of your feelings aren't new, either. You can't help it if you're fascinated by troll anatomy, and you've never not had these stupid, protective urges when it comes to his scars. But, Karkat's molt just seems to have enhanced everything. You think you might have a thing for people who are big and buff and could probably kill you, because lately just looking at Karkat is enough to make you stupid. Which isn't to say he wasn't attractive before, but more so that you really can't ignore it now.

You try to focus on the fact that he doesn't even need a towel for his hair instead. You've seen how water seems to roll right off, with the wiry texture of it. It's never wet for long. The towel is completely useless, and he only does it because he likes feeling all fresh and done up. It's so unbelievably stupid, it's endearing.

And, whoops. You're back to square one.

You just wish he didn't look so comfortable with it. If he was shivering, at least you could laugh at him. Instead he's just, totally chilling, looking all attractive and alien and shit, with that cute, irritated frown, and he has no idea. 

You sigh, and it comes out unexpectedly dreamy. You hate yourself.

You hate yourself even more when Karkat looks over at you. Why did  _ that _ have to be what caught his attention? God, and now he totally knows you were staring. Your life is hell. You are in hell. Your face feels hot and you want to disappear.

But instead  _ he _ looks embarrassed, finishing up his message quickly and putting his phone down. "I know, I know! Shut up. It was important." Maybe he thought you were exasperated. At any rate, he's finally getting dressed, now, and you've never been more grateful for anything. 

You drag your eyes away and fix them on your laptop, making some noncommittal sound, like, "Uh huh." You don't even know. You just know that you are  _ not _ going to be staring at him when that towel comes off.

After a few minutes, he drops down next to you in your pile, thankfully clothed in his usual baggy attire. He sits close enough to you that your shoulders press together, but even that's not enough. He leans right into your space, setting his chin on your shoulder and peering at your screen. He has his own laptop with him, but it's not even on yet, even though it's open. Rather than turn it on and mind his own business, he seems happier to stick his nose in yours.

Without even thinking about it, you turn your head and kiss his temple. He gives a pleased series of short clicks that make your chest feel warm. He wraps an arm around your waist to drag you in closer, and you're sure that if you got any closer than that, you'd be in his lap. You don't think that'd be too bad, honestly. You lean into him as easily as anything, fixing your comforter so it covers the both of you, but you barely even need it now that you have a living heater pressed up against you. 

It's unfortunate, how just him being there blankets you in this feeling of total security and happiness. He always seems to know exactly which buttons to press to leave you feeling dizzy with content. Leaning back against him feels like sinking into a perfectly warm bubble bath after a hard workout, or finally lying down in bed after a long day. All the tension flows out of you in an instant. 

At least you don't have anything embarrassing pulled up on your computer.

"What were you texting about?" you ask, because if he can stick his nose in your business, you can stick yours in his. Your hand finds Karkat's at your waist, and your fingers slide between his. 

He squeezes your hand. "Vriska's monopolized the book club, apparently. She's had them reading total garbage! And everyone's just going along with it!"

"Oh, so your picks aren't garbage?"

"Shut up. You fucking love my books. Also, it's different. Romance books have different standards!"

"Uh huh."

You listen to him go off about Vriska's trashy adventure novels while you dick around on your laptop, letting the familiar sound of his voice wash over you. You've been listening to him bitch about stupid shit for fourteen years, and somehow it still hasn't gotten old. In fact, you actually  _ missed _ it. You comment whenever he pauses, and sometimes when he doesn't, throwing your two cents in, and as per usual you only get him more riled up. He's really easy like that. You love it.

He never moves any further away from you. If anything, he just moves closer as he settles in and gets more comfortable, until you're lying propped up against his chest in the pile, with Karkat's face tucked in against your neck, and both of his arms around you. His breath on your neck makes you shiver a little, and when he catches on, he blows a raspberry on you, making you jump. Your elbow catches him in the stomach and he "oof"s, right before breaking into laughter. 

"Dick," you accuse, and plant your palm on his forehead, shoving his head away.

He rolls back onto the pile with a snicker, keeping just one arm around you so you're not totally disconnected. "What's that bullshit you always tell me? 'You make it too easy,'" he quotes you. 

You elbow him again, and shift around to get more comfortable. Which, mostly means getting more in Karkat's space, so you're leaning less against his shoulder and more into his actual chest. "I let you into my blanket and let you read my posts, and this is how you thank me? Bastard. Some friend you are."

He lets out an amused huff, nosing his way into your hair. "You'll live."

"Too late."

"Whatever! You know what I mean. Just because we're dead doesn't mean you have to take every fucking opportunity to remind me. I get it! I know. I didn't forget, so what the fuck kind of purpose does it serve? You're just needlessly waving around the death banner, storming up and down the bubbles and kicking over stones like everyone here doesn't already fucking know. It's so stupid. We're all dead, genius!"

"Not online."

" _ Fuck _ that." He says it with so much conviction, you snort. "Fuck you for even bringing that up. There are enough annoying people here! Who needs more! Especially  _ alive  _ people who still think they're hot shit and the alpha timeline or whatever. Those idiots are so full of it. Nothing good will ever come out of being online."

"Kris gave me Snowball," you remind him.

"And fuck him for doing that! Now I have to deal with a bloodthirsty little monster running around my hive all the time!"

"I have to deal with you running around the hive all the time."

He jabs his fingers into your sides, tickling, and you snort, squirming away from his fingers. "Fuck you. I'm a fucking delight. You're lucky to have me, you ungrateful shit for lobes." 

You tilt your head back to grin up at him, and you can see the moment when he forgets what he's talking about. He struggles with it, trying to recover his rant, so you remind him, "Kris."

"Yeah!" He takes it up immediately, and you mercifully don't tell him how red his face is. "Fuck that guy. Who the fuck is he anyway? No one's name is Kris! That's not a person. What the fuck makes him special enough to just break all the laws of the multiverse and show up here?"

"Now, I'm just spitballing, but probably his OP Lord of Doom powers that operate literally by breaking rules."

"Fuck you. Fuck you so fucking hard. Make a fist, right now, and shove that frond pod so far down your shout tunnel it comes out your human nook, and just jam it back and forth in there until you lose the ability to make noise."

"Sexy."

"Shut up! Stop talking. The point is, he's barely a person and he doesn't count."

"Kinda xenophobic, man."

"Dave, so help me, I will wring your fucking neck until you lose all ability to push sound through." 

"What was the point of this again?"

"I don't know! You always go off about dumb bullshit and we get lost."

" _ I _ go off about dumb bullshit? Look who the fuck's talking."

You bicker back and forth like that so long you lose track of time. As much as you can, anyway. The clock ticking in your heart reminds you as soon as you remember to focus on it again. It's background noise to everything else going on. 

It gets colder somehow, as it gets later, so you jam your way even further into Karkat's space to stay warm. You'd like to say somewhere along the way the two of you finally got your shit together and focused on your laptops, but it's pretty much the opposite. Instead, you've set them aside in favor of getting even closer.

Karkat acts as one big heating lamp, while your covers keep the heat trapped in. You've made yourself comfortable right between the two, stretched out on Karkat with your blanket bunched up around your shoulders. With your arms looped loosely around his shoulders and your head on his chest, you've given up on even trying to keep your eyes open. You just relax, listening to the rumble of his voice. With his arms folded over your back, you're locked in, trapped in total, familiar, warm comfort. 

It's been getting colder and colder, lately; something that's not your doing. While you were alive, it never got below fifty, and even that was extremely rare. Sixty degrees was cold for you. You know it has to be one of Karkat's memories if it's this cold, because Jade's not here, and you think it might've been even warmer on her island anyway. For now, it's fine, because you have Karkat to keep you warm, but the second you don't it won't be. Karkat's sweaters help a little, but they only go so far. 

You wonder what's got him thinking so much about the cold when he has no perception of time whatsoever. It's not like he knows winter is coming. 

He shifts a little, and the smallest amount of cold air gets through, making you shiver. You push up more against Karkat, turning your face into his chest and trying to seek out more of his heat to make up for it. Without even pausing his rant on the waste that apparently is you dragging your comforter all the way in here from your bed, he pulls said comforter up more securely around your shoulders. After, his hands, big and warm, rub along your spine, slipping under your shirt so you can feel the toughness of his carapace against your skin. You have to fight to keep from shivering again.

"It's so fucking cold," you grumble into his sweater, cutting his rant off.

"What? Oh, yeah. Sorry." He pauses, and the room gets colder, so you guess he must've been trying to fix it and failing. "Sorry," he says, again, sounding even more sheepish this time.

You bundle up your blankets more yourself, burrowing into Karkat and trying to find the warmest position you can with the sudden cold. "Dude, oh my god. It's not even winter yet, what the fuck. Why's it so cold? Do you like, run hotter now or something, so you need it to be cold?"

"Uh. Okay, hold on- Hey! Get your freezing feet off of me."

"Your fault, you warm them up."

"Ew, no. Stop that." He starts to shift and move around, and you cling tighter to him, starting to protest, but he frowns at you. "Let me move, I'm trying to figure this out."

With great, great reluctance, you do. He scooches over, dragging you with him, and for a while you can't figure out what he's trying to do. Then, Karkat rolls over, flipping your positions so you're trapped under him.

For a second, all your thoughts turn to static as you stare up at him, arms still looped around his neck and his face inches from yours. You have this insane urge to run your fingers through his hair and touch his face. You have an even crazier urge to kiss him. But you do none of that, and just stare up at him like an idiot until his cheeks go pink. 

He kisses your forehead, and then settles down to get comfortable on top of you. It's then that you realize why he swapped you. You're lying in the exact same spot he'd been in before, so the pile is warm and cozy under you. Plus, with Karkat on top of you, you don't think the cold could get to you if it gained sentience and wanted to. With his head on your shoulder and his weight pinning you down, you think you might almost be too warm. You could fall asleep like this if you're not careful. 

You card your fingers up through his hair, scratching your nails over his scalp the way he likes. Almost immediately, you're rewarded with that happy, content, rumbling noise that comes from somewhere deep in him. He kisses your shoulder, and you feel even warmer as the fondness you have for this big doofus overwhelms you. 

"Better?" he asks you, his voice coming out a little mumbled and a little muffled. 

"Definitely." You kiss his hair, and he gives a pleased chirp in reply. 

You could just lie there in silence until you fall asleep, and just take a nice nap with Karkat that either won't be a nap or won't be nice by the time you wake up. It's more tempting than it should be. 

Instead, though, you say, "You never answered me. What's got you thinking about the cold so damn much?" You're half afraid the answer will bring other things with it, too, and brace yourself for the rumbling of drones or the sticky warmth of blood. Unfortunately, your mouth is big, and your nose is eternally rammed up Karkat's business.

But the horrors never come.

Karkat doesn't answer at first and you can't tell what he's thinking. His thumb rubs against your side in a way that tickles lightly, but not enough for you to really protest. "I don't know. I just like it, I guess?"

"You just feel like having sweater weather," you say, in near disbelief. 

"Yes. Shut up about it. It's just better, okay?"

"Dude, are you actually making it cold as fuck all the time just so you have an excuse to wear sweaters and corner me into watching movies under blankets all day? Is that your scheme? Make Dave so cold he can't survive on his own?"

"Fuck you! Maybe. I like this! I like doing this kind of thing. It's nice. Do you have a fucking problem with that?"

"Karkat, that is  _ so _ sappy."

"Shut up!"

"No, it is. I can't believe you're making it cold just so you have an excuse to be up in my business." You're trying not to grin at him and reveal just how much you love that. You love that he wants to be close to you, just as much as you want to be close to him. Well, maybe not quite as much, but it's enough. It makes your heart feel funny and warm.

He groans, clearly mortified that you figured him out. "Shut up. You like it, anyway! Don't think I don't see you. You've been attached to me at the hip since I woke up, even before this! I'm just doing us both a favor here."

He has you there. You try to defend yourself, "Hey, okay, I went without Karkat Affection™ for like, two months. I deserve this."

"I know! Which is why I'm saying you can't complain." 

"I  _ guess _ . But I'm not even complaining. I'm mocking, okay? There's a difference."

"Oh my god. Shut the fuck up before I make it colder." Of course, because the dreambubbles operate on thought, the second he threatens it, the temperature drops. "Whoops," he mumbles, sheepishly.

You shove your face into his hair and kiss his head, squeezing him tight. Partially for the warmth, and partially because you're trying not to laugh at him. "You're such a loser."

He squeezes you back, kissing your shoulder. "And what does that make you, if you love me so much?"

"The audience."

"Shut up." 

You snort, but your amusement doesn't last long. Soon, you're distracted by the feeling of Karkat trailing kisses across your shoulder and up your neck. They're gentle and brief, one pressed after another like he's trying to bury you in them. It feels like he could.

It makes your face feel hot and your chest feel tight, but you wouldn't dream of pushing him away. Instead, your eyes slip shut and your head falls back, giving him more room to work with. Dully, you wonder if this is right, or if it's too far. You're not sure you care. Your fingers thread up into his hair, cradling the back of his head, and you hope he won't stop.

You've never been particularly good at keeping space between you and Karkat. Even on the meteor, the two of you were constantly finding ways to cross what should've been the physical boundaries of whatever your relationship to each other was. Now that you're living together, there are barely  _ any _ boundaries anymore, because he's so touchy and you're so clingy. You keep eroding whatever boundaries you do have by doing shit like this, all the time, where you push it just that little bit further, and to what is, for some reason, always your surprise, the other one accepts it with open arms. 

You're pretty sure this is one of those instances. One or two kisses is one thing, you think, but this is something different. It's too  _ much _ . It's too… loving, and there's too much of an undercurrent of appreciation and care. It fills you with this feeling of being about to burst, because it's almost just too much for you, but at the same time, every kiss soothes it. You think he's pushing your vague relationship boundaries, but you're very,  _ very _ okay with it.

For a few minutes, you’re surrounded by warmth, sprawled out in a pile of pillows and blankets while the person you trust the most kisses you senseless. Even if you wanted to say something, you couldn’t, because you don’t remember how to make words anymore. All you can do is relax until you feel like you could melt and listen to the low, affectionate chirrs coming from Karkat in a steady stream. Your fingers brush gently through his hair, more idle petting than anything, and you think you could drift off like this if it weren’t for the tension in your heart. 

He stops when he reaches your jaw, though, cupping your cheek as he presses one final kiss to your opposite cheek. When you open your eyes, he’s got the dumbest, fondest smile on his face, and your face feels so warm you know it has to be red. It’s been  _ years _ , but the fact that he cares about you so much still cuts like a knife sometimes. You don’t understand it, but you’re past questioning it. It feels better to just take it as it is. His thumb brushes gently over your cheekbone, and he doesn’t seem inclined to move, taking you in like  _ you’re _ something special. You don’t think you’ve ever wanted to kiss him more. 

You almost do. But you  _ know _ , so fucking well, that you absolutely cannot do that. Not again. It’s not fair to him, and you don’t want to put that rift between you again.

Instead, you ruin it with your big mouth. “If you take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

He scoffs, and you can see him struggling with a grin. “If you even  _ think _ about taking out your camera, I swear I’ll suffocate you with the very shit in this pile.”

“Oh, come on. Is it  _ so _ horrible to have your picture taken?” The corner of your mouth turns up- you just can’t help it. You think talking to him makes you dumber. Your fingers brush against his cheek, and your smile only grows when he leans into your touch.

“ _ Yes _ . I look like a squeakbeast that found the dumpster out back of a five-star grubchain and has been camping out in there so long it doesn’t remember what moonlight looks like anymore.”

“Okay, clearly you need to spend more time looking in the mirror. Have you  _ seen _ yourself lately? Because dude.  _ Dude _ .” You grab his bicep for emphasis, squeezing it. On instinct, he tenses, and the muscle flexes under your hand. God, he is  _ so _ ripped now.

You just catch the way his face flushes before he shoves it in your shoulder again. “Oh my god, shut up. I feel like a giant fucking cholerbear trying to waddle around on two legs all the time. I’m so scared I’m going to accidentally crush something.”

“Like me?” you tease him. For a while, he’d been  _ so _ nervous about putting too much weight on you or squeezing you too tight. It wasn’t until you picked him up and carried him around that he finally believed you when you said you could take it and started actually cuddling with you properly again.

“That’s not funny! I’m  _ still _ worried I’m going to crush you and you’re just going to stick it out because your pan is fucking fried and you think you can handle it,” he complains. “You’re so stupid sometimes. I could break your torso pillar squeezing you too tight and you’d still come back for more.”

You want to argue, but he’s probably right. He usually is. “I’m fine, dude. It’s like a weighted blanket.” You pat his back, reassuringly. “You’re seriously not as big as you think you are.”

He sighs, and kisses the side of your neck. Your brain whites out for a second, so you barely hear him when he says, “You’re so dumb.”

He’s really not wrong.

You rub along his back, rather than argue, moving in steady, soothing circles.

For a while, he just rests there, heavy and comforting against you. His hand rests against your shoulder, but as the silence stretches, he moves it, fingertips brushing against the side of your neck. It tickles a little, but his touch is soft and idle as his fingers slide over your skin. He cups the side of your neck, and you feel his lips on the opposite side, pressed under your jaw. 

You’re not sure what to think, because you can’t think. He seems to have a knack for pressing all the buttons that’ll make you an idiot today.

You’re saved from your dilemma when he speaks up, saying, “You know what? Give me the camera.”

Your head’s empty enough that you uncapatchalogue it without even arguing, holding it up for him. After, you blink. “What? You better not be taking it. I’ve got shit on there to download still.”

He swipes it out of your hand, kissing your jaw before he props himself up on his elbows above you. He holds the camera past your head, where you can’t see it, and you hear the soft clicking as he fiddles with it. You tip your head back to try, but you give up pretty quickly, instead choosing to focus on his face as he frowns over your head at it. “Don’t worry about it.”

Of course, that makes you worry about it. “I swear to god, if you delete anything-”

“I’m not going to fuck with your precious pictures,” he reassures you, ducking his head down to kiss your cheek.

You’re not totally reassured, but you try to believe him. You rest your hands on his sides, rubbing gently along them while you watch him try to figure out how your camera works. He’s probably fucking up all your settings, but it’s fine. You fuck them up yourself all the time. 

You hear him take a few pictures, but you’re more focused on that concentrated little frown he gets, and the way he chews his lip without even thinking about it. You think, again, about how much you’d like to kiss him. You don't think about what that means. 

You hold back as long as you can stand to before your will breaks. You reach up to cup his cheek, and lift your head enough to kiss his jaw. He looks down at you, and you take that as encouragement, trailing kisses along his jaw and holding him in. Soon, he's leaning down to you, so you don't have to keep stretching up for him, and he lets you cover him in kisses, soft and far too fond. There's a happy rumbling coming from him that gives away how much he likes it, and his face has gone pink with embarrassment. It just makes you want to kiss him even more. 

When you pull back, you know you're smiling at him like an idiot, and try as you might, you can't seem to stop. The look he gives you is so soft and fond, you feel your heart skip a beat when he leans in and kisses your forehead. 

You wish he'd kiss you. You hate yourself for it. 

After a moment, he sits up on you, straddling your waist and fiddling with your camera. He really doesn't move far from you, though, hunched forward over you, so it'd be easy for you to reach up and touch his face, if you wanted. Unfortunately, it's just enough that you'd have to really sit up more if you wanted to kiss him again.

You give him a questioning look, and he scowls. "Damn it."

"What?" You think maybe there's something he can't figure out with the camera, so you reach for it.

He swats your hand away, though, and you see him fidget with the controls. It doesn't occur to you that he's trying to aim it until he snaps a picture of you. "Stop making that face. You're wrecking it."

"What face? Hang on, are you  _ actually _ trying to-"

"Yes, now shut up."

You laugh at him, even as your cheeks go pink, and your blush only gets darker when you hear him snap another picture. "I was joking, dude. Holy shit. You can't just get candids like that."

"Fuck you! I totally can." He's  _ still _ trying to get a good picture of you, and he swears. "It's out of focus."

You're trying so hard not to grin. It's so dumb, but it's so fucking sweet at the same time. You get it- honestly, you do. You snap pictures of Karkat when he's not paying attention all the time, just because you love the faces he makes too much not to save them. You've gotten maybe one or two ever where he looks at you with that much love, and those are your favorites. Those ones you don't print. Those are just for you, and no one else. You're not used to being on the other side of the camera, though. 

"Here. It's this one, here." You reach up to help him, showing him where the focus is. His fingers brush against yours, and you don't really want to pull your hand back. He's got this cute, determined frown that makes it that much harder to get rid of your smile, and you reach up farther to brush his hair out of his face while he tries to figure out your camera.

You're acutely aware that the face you're making could be immortalized at any moment, but you can't wipe your smile off your face, so your cheeks just get pink with self-consciousness. Which, only serves to make you feel more embarrassed. 

He snaps another picture, and this time he seems more pleased with the result. You're not sure you want to see it. 

"You're going to send me these," he tells you, and it's not a request. 

You roll your eyes and snort, and you hear the camera click again. "Hey," you protest. 

He cuts you off before you can say more with a scoff. "Oh no, you do  _ not _ get to complain. I get full rights to this. Now you get to see how it feels, having your own personal paparazzi all the goddamn time.”

“And you get to see how it feels to have such a whiny model,” you return, and move your hands to his hips, slipping them under his sweater to keep them warm. It’s colder without him on you, and you’re willing to tolerate it for a while, but not too long.

He jumps a little when your cold hands press against him, and swats at you. “Hey! Cold!”

“That’s what happens when my blanket freezes me out,” you tell him, and pinch his sides gently.

He slaps at your hands again, before hiking the blanket back up over his shoulders and leaning over you more. “Better?”

“Mm, closer.”

He leans on his elbows over you again and gives you an exasperated look. “You only want me here because it’s too close for me to take any pictures of you.”

“Not true. Actually, I want you here because…” You trail off as you lean up, cupping the back of his head to pull him in and kiss his cheek.

“Oh.” His face flushes.

You wish you were the one with the camera. At least he seems distracted from it, now, leaning in after you until you’re right back where you started, laying in the pile with Karkat on top of you, while he peppers kisses along your jaw.

You would have been content to do that all day, until Karkat kissed you so many times you forgot your own name. Everything else is so far away, and you’re already basically incapable of thinking about anything but him. It just feels  _ better _ like this. Karkat might be onto something, because you really don’t know why you haven’t spent more time cuddled up like this before.

Since Karkat finished his molt, your dynamic has definitely shifted, but you  _ swear _ it’s not your fault. At least, not completely. Yes, maybe you have a hard time leaving his side, and maybe you’re unfathomably fond and it shows, but you didn’t start this. All this close contact, constant cuddles, and these fucking kisses? That’s like, 80% Karkat, at least. You’re not totally sure you get it, because  _ you’re _ the one who missed  _ him _ while he was out cold and had no sense of the passage of time whatsoever, but like hell are you going to look this gift horse in the mouth.

When he's satisfied with the shades of red your face has turned, he sets his chin on your shoulder, and you hear your camera beep softly as he flicks through the pictures he's taken. As they continue, you think he might look at the pictures you've taken too. That's fine by you. You're perfectly content to just hold him, curling your fingers into his sweater and shutting your eyes. 

You try to remember what pictures you've taken since he started his molt. You try to remember what you did during his molt at all. The answer to both, you think, is not a lot. All the pictures you took just made you feel worse, in some way or another. You deleted most of them right after taking them. A few you kept.

There are a few pictures of Khar, Rose, Jade, the Governor, and Snowball. Your favorite one is of Rose and Jade in Snowball's enclosure, where Rose is pinned to the ground by Jade, who sits up on her stomach, and is caught mid-laugh as Snowball sniffs Rose's face, to her horror and disgust. You also like yours and Rose's ironic recreation of the Fault in Our Stars cover, and your picture of Khar staring down your cat uneasily, in an almost perfect replication of an old, old picture you have of Jade. 

All of your other pictures have a much more somber tone. There's a shot of your old apartment bedroom, viewed through a doorway in the hallway of Karkat's hive, with that distinctive, Alternian, blocky shape and style. Similarly, there's another one of Karkat's hive from the street view of an abandoned and dark Houston city, sandwiched between the skyscrapers you grew up with. There's one taken from the roof of your old apartment of the city you grew up with meshed with your Land in the Game, with lava flowing from skyscrapers and filling the streets. There's one of a katana mounted to the wall, right over where you painted one of your more serious murals. There's another of your hand in a bloodstained and first aid supplies-filled bathroom, wrapped tightly in layers of gauze, with already dark bruises marring your knuckles. There's one of your old, shattered shades, with blood staining the plastic shards you had to pull out of your own face. 

You hope he doesn't actually look at those.

After so long of silence that you didn't really expect him to speak up again at all, he sighs and mutters, "I can't leave you alone for one minute. You didn't tell me it was that bad." Evidently, he saw them anyway.

"It wasn't, usually," you protest weakly, quietly.

"It's not happening now, right? Like, you're not sweeping this all under the decorative floor plane when I'm not looking?"

"Nah. I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Yeah. I've got you."

He kisses your cheek, capatchaloguing your camera so he can wrap his arms around and under you. You move with him, arching your back up into him to give him space to fit his arms under you and pressing your nose into his cheek. Closing your eyes, just breathing him in, feels like home. Like this, something in you settles, and you feel like you could stay right here for the rest of eternity.

After a pause, he squeezes you tightly, and says, "I love you."

You're still not used to hearing it, even though it's been years. He doesn't say it often, and every time he does, it's like he reaches straight into your heart, flicking whatever switch needed to make you feel stupidly emotional. It just hits harder when he says it, maybe because you  _ know _ just how much he means it. 

Your hand slides up into his hair, holding him in as you press your face a little more insistently against his, eyes screwing shut. Your chest feels tight, but you manage to say, "I love you too." 

There's another pause, where Karkat clicks softly and affectionately at you, while you pet through his hair. 

Then, you add, "I missed you."

He sighs and squeezes you again. "I know. I'm sorry." There's more behind it.  _ I should've been there, I should've done something, I should've prepared you, I shouldn't have left you. _ He's never been good at not blaming himself for everything. You know he feels bad. You know he's worried.

You remind him, "It's not your fault. Shit just happens."

He gives a vague sort of chirr, turning his face into the side of your neck.

You run your fingers through his hair, playing gently with it. It's so much stiffer than any human's, and that makes it easy to push it around, so that it stands on end. It's weird how what is alien and inhuman has become the most comforting to you. 

You continue, "You couldn't have done anything even if you wanted to. It just doesn't feel right when you're not hovering over my shoulder, yelling at me to get my shit together all the time."

He snorts, and his breath tickles against your neck. "Whatever would you do, if you couldn't drive me up the wall every fucking night?"

"Deteriorate into nothingness, probably." There's a pause, and then you ask, "Too real?"

He squeezes you in tighter against himself, which is an answer all in its own. "You better fucking not. You're the worst, but you're too valuable and strong of a person to go losing yourself over one loud idiot."

"Increase in supply, decrease in demand," you mumble, without even thinking about it.

"You shut the fuck up," he snaps. "I don't care how many Daves there are out there. No one is exactly like you. That's how timelines work, right? No two are exactly the same. You're unique, and special, and different than anyone else."

"Those are all synonyms, man. Ow, hey." You swat at his hand where it pinches you. 

"Shut up and listen. I know I'm not much. But you're  _ my _ Dave, and that has to count for something, right? To someone, you have been, are, and will be individual- the only one that ever mattered. This you, right now, right here, is valuable. You  _ mean _ something to someone. And not just me. But even it was, I'd like to believe I was a damn good enough friend that you'd keep going without me, because you know that's what I'd want." 

It cuts so deep and so raw, and even though you've heard it before, it doesn't make it any less difficult to keep breathing. You love him. You love him more than you'll ever love anything or anyone else and it hurts, how lost you'd be without him. But he's right. At least about that last thing.

You squeeze him tight, tight as you possibly can, and he grunts faintly. "You count for everything," you tell him, quietly. "I don't ever want to lose you."

"You won't," he promises, kissing your neck. 

"I love you," you say, and you hate how desperate you sound, or maybe just feel. You need to hear it back, hear him tell you how much he loves you, that he'll never leave you, that you won't be alone. 

He does. He says it in the way he chirrs at you, in that affectionate way that he seems to save just for you. He says it in the way he squeezes you and kisses up your neck and across your jaw and cheek, again and again, so fucking loving you don't know what to do. He says it verbally, in between kisses; "I love you too."

It's wrong to depend so much on him, or anyone. You shouldn't be so needy, or vulnerable, or emotional. It shouldn't make you happy when he touches you and kisses you.

But, you also should be alive. You stopped caring about all that years ago.

It gets exhausting, spending so much time thinking about who you should be and what you should do. Sometimes you just want to fucking enjoy what you have and not think about it too hard.

You don't want to think too much about your feelings towards Karkat. Because, in the end, does it really matter? You know what's important, at the end of the day. And, however far he wants to extend the boundaries of your friendship, you can just roll with that. It's more important that you keep him than kiss him.

So, when he pulls back a little to look at you, and he's so, so close, and the fondness on his face is almost too much, you don't kiss him. You hold his face in your hands, brush your thumbs over his cheeks and trace them across those light, faint freckles, and you don't kiss him. 

Instead, he kisses you. One kiss, against your cheek, soft and fond. 

You're content with that.


	19. recipe for a fraymotif countdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so i got a request on tumblr for a "good end" for latte, so heres a??? theoretical one ig??

Dave stares up at the sky as the cracks that have always threatened their time in the dreambubbles widen. Flashes of green light up the void as it rumbles and shatters, casting a sickly glow on his face. Next to him, Karkat squeezes his hand, and he drags his gaze away from the end of the world to smile his way.

On his other side, Rose's ghostly eyes seem to glow brighter than usual as she grips his hand. "Five minutes," she announces, calmly. 

"Together, right?" On Karkat's other side, Jade peers around at him. There's a sad kind of humor in her eyes, but she grins like it's any other day, and any other plan.

"C'mon, it's been eighteen fuckin years. That pact can legally fuck, now. You think I'm gonna just break it after all this time?" He says, letting go of Karkat's hand to meet hers. They clasp each other's wrists, tight, and he flashes her that same kind of bittersweet smile. 

On Jade's other side, Rox sniffs one final time, pulling his face out of Dirk's shoulder and wiping his eyes. Somehow, his eyeliner hasn't smudged, but he's quiet, staring out at the void. It's hard to tell, but Dave doesn't think he sees it. 

Dirk squeezes him, where he has his arm around his shoulders, and glances over at the rest of the group. "We don't have much time left. Make it count."

Rose sighs. "Please, save us the dramatics. We've said all the goodbyes we need to." As she says it, however, her eyes are on Kanaya. No doubt, thinking of a better way she could yet say everything she wanted to.

Kanaya just smiles at her, leaning all the way down to kiss the corner of her mouth. "We have had a while to prepare. But still."

"Yes, still," she agrees quietly, and Dave looks away, to give his sister as small of a moment of privacy as he can offer.

Karkat has a glare fixed on the horizon like he's trying to shoot laser beams from his eyes and melt the blackhole away that way, and Dave and Jade exchange a knowing look. She takes Karkat's arm again, squeezing it tight, and Dave reaches up, brushing his fingers back through Karkat's hair. When Karkat looks at him, his eyes are a little watery, and his face is red from trying to keep it all together under that thin guise of anger. It's a face that, at this point, Dave knows well.

The corner of Dave's mouth quirks up just a little, caught somewhere between pity and fondness. 

Karkat's whole face scrunches, and he looks away, an uncomfortable clicking noise rising in his chest. He scrubs at his eyes with his free hand, angrily. "Shut up. Don't look at me."

Dave's smile grows, and it feels so stupid, how fond he is of this giant, clumsy bastard, but he wouldn't have it any other way. "Karkat," he says, brushing his fingers against his cheek. 

"Shut up! I don't want to hear your stupid voice say a bunch of stupid things and-"

"Babe," he says again, sliding his hand down to cup just behind Karkat's neck, starting to pull him in.

"What?" Karkat demands, even as he stoops, and even as he wraps his free arm around Dave's waist. 

It's been years, and even standing at the end of the world, knowing his life is almost up, kissing him doesn't feel any less perfect. 

The minutes tick down. Jade cries quietly into his shirt, and Karkat holds them both, even though he feels Karkat’s tears hit his shoulder. Rose won’t cry, but as he grips her hand he can feel her mind, full of frustration at not being able to do more, and despair at having so little time left. Dirk says something that only Rox can hear, his voice uncharacteristically soft. Kanaya rubs her thumb over her tube of lipstick, but they all know there will be nothing to fight when the end comes.

The sky shatters around them and pieces of void go flashing past the bubble. None of it penetrates, though, so they stay safe, for now. In the distance, other ghosts go spinning into the void, and their screams only get louder and louder. 

Rose squeezes his hand, and he knows it’s time. He kisses the top of Jade’s head and starts to let go, and she understands. Rox takes her hand when she moves back into the line, and Karkat takes both of theirs. 

“It’s time,” he and Rose say, in unison.

“God, do _ not _ make the last thing I hear one of your creepy human twinsyncs,” Karkat groans.

“As opposed to your grumping?” Jade snorts at him, lifting their hands to rub her eyes.

“You guys really have such refined taste in ways to go out,” Dirk mutters.

“Fuck you!” Karkat snaps.

“I prefer leaving surrounded by what I knew and loved rather than something miserable and poetic,” Kanaya cuts in.

“_ Thank _ you.”

“Where would I be, after all, without Karkat taking personal offense to every sentence ever uttered?”

“You know what! You know fucking what, Kanaya? I’m going to take that as a _ compliment _ ! So _ thank you _, for holding such great value on my obviously superior takes.” Karkat jabs a finger at her, jerking Dave’s hand with his.

Dave just manages to stifle his snort, agreeing, “Like music to my ears.”

Kanaya doesn’t fair so well, sniggering into her free hand. 

“As nice as this is, we have a date with final death to get to,” Rose reminds them.

That sombers the mood considerably. Jade takes a slow breath in, and Karkat kisses the back of Dave’s hand. 

When they step forward, there’s not a whole lot that Dave knows about what his future will look like. But, in the present, surrounded by the people he cares about the most, _ choosing _ how his story will end, he knows it’s not the worst way to go.


	20. This is how your day goes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> really standard day in the life shit. no warnings for this one, i think? except maybe mild extensionalism, but thats just this whole ass collection.

After being awake for hours, you finally pry yourself out of the recooperacoon when Karkat starts stirring. His elbow catches you in the side on your way out, and  _ he's _ startled by it. He yelps, and you tip out of the stupid slime container and execute a flip just in time to avoid landing on your head. You land on your ass instead, and Karkat immediately starts babbling out apologies in Alternian. You pull yourself to your feet, shove his head back under the slime, and tell him it's not a big deal. You're not sure if he listens to you or if you just can't hear him through the slime. You choose to believe it's the former, even though it's probably the latter. 

Even though you're sure Karkat's been onto you since day one, you continue your longstanding ruse of pretending like you'd just woken up whenever Karkat starts waking up, and escaping to the kitchen to make coffee. It has the awesome triple effect of allowing you to pretend that you sleep more than you do, you don't spend ages languishing in "bed," and you definitely don't spend hours cuddling close to Karkat because you crave affection. And then, as if all that wasn't enough, you get the bonus of offering Karkat coffee whenever he wakes up and securing yourself immediately in his good graces. (Not an easy feat, when he's just woken up.)

Karkat's starting to pry himself out of the recooperacoon by the time you finish getting dressed and leave the room, so you're not surprised when he staggers into the kitchen before the coffee's done. You greet him, "Hey, sleeping beauty," and he wraps himself around you, grumbling into your hair. Having a Karkat coat makes it a little harder to take your toaster waffles out and eat them, but you make do, pulling one directly from the toaster and crunching it while Karkat acts like a weighted blanket, draped over your shoulders. You think he knows it's fine because of the way you lean back into him. You know he knows it's fine because you always accept his affection, whatever form it comes in.

You make Karkat his coffee the way he likes it. He drinks the whole thing before he's capable of speaking English, whereas before, he only clicked at you in Alternian, or once, when you commented on it, swore at you in Spanish. You eat your seventh toaster waffle and he tells you you're worse than a Snarlax, because at least those take the time to digest their food. You tell him he means a Sarlacc, and he takes your eighth waffle and eats it himself.

You feed your cats while Karkat monologues about how exhausted he is, and how lame the dreambubbles are, and how bullshit sleeping is. You leave the room to feed Snowball and when you come back he's  _ still _ talking, and has barely made any progress on his food at all because he’s been so busy bitching. You tell him that he fits the Sarlacc descriptor better than you because he takes so damn long to eat, and he cusses you out, effectively derailed. 

You know you should shower and shit, but you don't. Instead you drape yourself over Karkat's back, arms looped over his shoulders and face pressed into his neck. It's cold and he radiates warmth, and you don't want to stand around assnaked in a freezing bathroom. So you procrastinate, and try to leech any and all warmth and affection you can from the next few minutes. 

Karkat, ever merciful, never says anything about your clinginess. Instead, he tugs on the sleeve of your sweater- his sweater- pulling it loose so your hand gets lost in the fabric. It's way too big on you. He says, "I see you finally discovered where I was "hiding" all the sweaters." 

"Shut up." 

He snorts. "Your level of object permanence is appalling. I put things away and then they suddenly just stop existing for you."

"Yeah, but you put all of them away in  _ my _ drawer."

"It's the only drawer you don't wear clothes from!"

"So you admit you were hiding them."

You bicker back and forth until Karkat finishes his food and then some. He fiddles and messes with your sleeve until he finally gives in and takes your hand, hesitating, and then kissing your knuckles. You’re glad he can’t see your face. He holds it while he eats, and you somehow manage to argue past the heat in your cheeks.

You finally get off of him when he says he needs to shower. Of course, he beats you to it, because you're such a procrastinator.

While you wait for your turn, you water Jade's plants and hope that they don't die. 

You shower, you get dressed, you start your day for real, and the lazy atmosphere of morning slips past you. Karkat's retreated to his room to do god knows what, so you head out and find your way to the radio tower.

You constructed it back when you still believed in the shit John told you, and while you don't think about him so much anymore, you still think this might've had some worth. Maybe keeping busy and keeping up a job was a good thing. When you’re doomed and dead in the bubbles, boredom is your greatest enemy. A job staved it off, at least for a while.

So, you find your way into the recording room. You put on your headphones and get everything started. Then, you start mixing. You never know if anyone hears you, but you still play, switching seamlessly between songs for hours. You get into a rhythm of it after a while, swapping and picking and experimenting a little. You let your mind wander, but never too far, and tell yourself this isn't a complete waste of time. 

You pass a fair amount of the day like that before you put on a pre-made tracklist and let it play. You've been advertising for ages for another person to work with you on this, so it’s not just you trying and failing to keep the station running all the time, but no one's ever called in. You're not sure if that's because of the dreambubbles' nature getting in the way, or because there's no one interested, or because no one ever hears you. You choose to believe it's the first one. 

You head back inside. Still no Karkat, but the Governor comes padding up to you, and you consider that a definite win. You manage to hold your beloved cat’s attention for a while once you find a toy, and you tire him out keeping him chasing things all across the room. When he lies down to nap, you lie down with him, and pet his silky fur until he gives you a stink eye and stalks off with his twin tails in the air. Aloof bastard.

You spend the rest of the day painting. Karkat's given up on telling you not to paint on the walls at this point, because you know he doesn't really care, and you always do it anyway. He does hate that you're painting what you're calling "troll Obama" in the entry hall, though, because as he says, "I've told you a thousand fucking times, Dave. There is no troll Obama! Alternia wasn't a democratic state! There were no elected positions!" 

At some point, you make the mistake of putting your paints down long enough for the Governor to walk through them and coat the floor with little, grey pawprints. He protests when you scoop him up and rush him off to wash his paws, and you earn several grey prints of your own, as well as some scratches. The second you put him down, he rushes off to go lick his paws in private, or maybe tell Karkat on you. 

You paint with music blasting until Karkat does, eventually, come downstairs, and reminds you there's this thing called food.

He makes dinner and you "help," which is code for get in the way, and he puts up with you. You ask him what he's done with his day, and he tells you jackshit. When he asks you the same, you give an identical reply. It's an open invitation to ditch whatever you were doing before and spend the rest of the night watching romcoms you threw into the alchemizer to make new romcoms. Which you do.

After dinner (for you and the cats), you find yourselves sprawled out on the couch, the same way you are most nights, watching trashy movie after trashy movie. Karkat hates most of them and actually approves of one. You put your ear against his chest and listen to the rumbleclick of his voice while he bitches and moans about cinema. He runs his fingers through your hair, limiting his wild gesturing to one hand, just for you. On the TV, Shrek freaks out about telling Will Smith how he feels, and Karkat curses you, your family, and the load gaper you used to create this. But he never lets go of you.

You have no idea when you fall asleep. You realize that you must have when the sudden quiet prods dimly at your consciousness, telling you the TV is off now. Your body shifts of no accord of your own as Karkat pulls you into his arms and gets to his feet, scooping you up like you're some little cat, rather than a 6'3" grown man. You barely react, only enough to tuck your face into his shoulder and loop an arm around his neck. You can hear that low rumbling noise in his chest and you zero in on it, focusing on the even rhythm. 

He doesn't make you wake up more, or try to pry you off of him, which you appreciate. Instead, he sets you in your own bed and pushes right in with you. He pulls up the blankets and you tangle together underneath, with Karkat pressing soft kisses to your head and chirping at you every now and again. You fall asleep again to his warmth and the sound of his alien clicking, comforted in knowing he's right there with you. 

Then, the next morning, you wake up and start all over again. Again, and again, and again, until the dreambubbles are all finally destroyed. It’d be terrifying, if he didn’t make you so happy.


End file.
